Nope, still there in Max 2011, at least from my experience. I have noticed this problem before, didn't know what to do about it, but turning the tris works well, so thank yah. +1 for script
Thought so :) My shader displays the specular skewing on an non-normalmapped object yes, because it uses a way more advanced specular calculation than a simple, crappy default material. And I'm certain that doing this after the bake won't work in all cases. I remember many times, on surfaces more complex than a cylinder…