I'm glad that you find it useful guys!
dubcat, care to explain what you ment by that? Surely you knew about direct visibility override.
maru, sure i could add a camera, more shadowcatcher objects and so on, but then it wouldn't be a basic studio anymore :] I just wanted to share my scene with others as it is. I have no doubt that everyone will find something to add to it, to make it even more useful. Feel free to share it here, if you'll improve it noticeably.
Lately i'm using this scene a lot and together with interactive rendering and newest features from 1.4 it makes my product shots ridiculously fast.