There are two situations where I'm not sure whether a character would gain insight from SA spending. The first is when they spend 2 pts. outside of play to get a new skill. The second is spending SA's for summoning/banishing/imprisoning (cant remember which) to make it permanent. Would a character gain insight for these spendings or not?

I certainly think that spending SA to get a skill test is appropriate, as you get insight for increasing other things, I do not see why attempts at skill improval should be left out.

...being relatively new to the system, all I can say is that to me it sounds like the apparent intention of Insight Points is kindof a "measure of character experience" or more simply "how much a character has actually effectively participated". The reason I say that is that (unless I'm misunderstanding) the ONLY use for Insight is when you get geeked and have to roll a new character...it kindof lets you roll a replacement character whose overall power level doesn't suck compared to the original character...that way you don't end up in a situation where (forgive my borrowing D&D terminology here) your 10th level character croaks and you then have to roll up and play a first level character who feels worthless because the rest of the party (which didn't die) is still all 10th level. A 1st level surrounded by 10th levels is pointless...if the GM throws a threat big enough to SCARE the 10th's then the 1st is going to "die in the blast for sure" even though the 10th's will probably survive with ease.

Such being the case, I'd be inclined to believe the intention is to tally all SA's spent in any fashion whatsoever, because they represent "earned experience" of the character regardless of HOW they are used. Someone please correct me if I'm all wet.

I think Dain is essentially correct, but I would add that the other incentive here is to encourage people to actually *spend* their SAs, rather than hoarding them so they always get truly enormous bonuses whenever any of them goes off.

Matt