There are ways to do it but first I would advise you drop that $6000 programme your using and load up blender , its free and the community around have some amazing tutorials on youtube et al .
lol, your actually telling him to downgrade?
Hmm not sure what you mean Max 9.0 is better than Blender 2.7 or 2.69 ? no point him learning things form yesteryear and finding comminty scripts dont work anymore etc . I offered advice given the situation of someone using a commercial product who has loaded an uknown model and is struggling with how to decimate it .
I was there some years ago and decided to use blender , I wouldnt say I downgraded I prefer I set a more measurable aim and it worked for me .
First Normal maps are better than many verts for gaming exp[lained here
Decimating here
so on and so forth .
Now he has 3ds Max and Blender to choose and with blender he can have Dev branch and stable infact i have 4 versions because new 2.70 UI is like Max i dont like it.
EDIT , he tells me Blender lags when he applies textures so i guees Blender not for professorX so all moot.