For what it's worth, here's a suggestion for whatever is left of Curious Labs.

Recently you have been offering a number of "bundles", designed I suppose to encourage continued use of your products. Well....unfortunately.....I purchased Poser 5 before Christmas because I was dumb enough to believe that the price of $319 really was only going to be good through the end of December.

In January, you came out with a Vue4/Poser 4 bundle for $320....which I would have purchased instead of Poser 5, since I really want to use the two together.

Anyway.....how about a "special price" on Poser 4 for those of us who purhcased Poser 5, but do not own P4! Here's an example of the ad you could run:

"Did you purchase Poser 5 and discover that your 700mhz Pentium with 256 mb of ram (system requirements recommended by us)runs parts of it like it was driving in wet concrete? Not ready to spend $1,000 on a new 2 ghz computer with 1G of ram so you can really use the new hair room? Well.....we at Curious Labs "feel your pain"! And we have a deal for you!! Send proof of purchase for your "drop dead easy to use" Poser 5 along with $50 and we will send you a copy of Poser 4 and Pro Pack! Three software packages for the price of one! Two that will work now....the other you can put on the shelf until you can afford to buy that new super computer and we fix some more bugs! But hurry.....this is a limited time offer! The new Curious Labs Team is committed....or will be very soon....and the last person who knows how to package our software for mailing is due to leave in a month. We at Curious Labs appreciate your business and look forward to working with you in the future.....if DAZ will only hire us!"

Attached Link: http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu

LOL! CL poorly handled the press and release of P5 at a bad economic time. We all know what "three strikes and you're out" means...

I couldn't resist poking them a bit. I have a feeling they are struggling to figure out what course to take....but it is maddening and frankly, I think they should give Poser 5 only users a special price break if we want Poser 4! :) I have a 1.7 ghz with 512 mb of ram and XP Pro and still can't use the hair room with any degree of speed....and I am way to impatient to sit and watch it "loading objects....loading textures....renderning....rendering....."!!:) For the normal stuff, the speed is about the same as Bryce 4, but hair room.....forget it! I doubt we will see an "open source" Poser any time soon :)

Right now poser 5 hardware requirements are higher than Lightwave3D and MAYA complete thats what a lack of hardware acceleration will do for you :-/

831-462-8902 Anyone know if this number is still in service? I got it out of the manual. Maybe complaints should be directed here, unless it has already been disconnected. I so love sarcasm.

I think it's a good idea, although the ad could use a little work :) It'd be good PR i think. After all, newbies who stepped right into P5 must have hit a ton of problems. Many probably just gave up on it. I'm a veteran poser user and I have. But I still have my P4/PP.

I think they should strip out the new renderer, face room, dynamic clothing and hair. Leave the new parameter dials, some fixes, and the new library structure. Then offer it as a nominal sidegrade to all poser owners.

Ooops...hit send too soon. This way all Poser 5 owners who don't have P4 can also have a simpler version to use and P4/PP owners who don't want all the bells and whistles can get a small upgrade with some useful stuff.

Spit, If you don't want the renderer, the setup room, the cloth room, the hair room, the face room, the new materials and ... why upgrade? Just be content with a 4-year-old program and spend a few bucks for a library manager. People who actually want dynamic cloth, hair, reflections, and all the useful tools (more than bells and whistles... these are TOOLS) encourage development. Carolly

IMHO they can't leave the new parameter dial panel in place and get the performance back - it's either or. (I.e. the panel has to be integrated back into the main window.) But as Carolly says, remove all that and you have essentially PP with 2 level libraries. But this would still be a useable alternative to P4 (no multi-pane, setup, etc.) and P5 (no go) - for those like me who upgraded P4 to P5 instead on PP - if the price was right. Free (CD only) for a reasonable shipping and handling charge, say $10 - $25? With perhaps a special non-upgradeable Serial Number to protect future upgrades to P5 (when/if it works).

See my earlier thread on Poser 4.5. By now, any competent programmer could have implemented all the features I listed and CL could be selling an attractive product.

But still, where can I legally get the Poser Pro Pack by itself? (What bugs has it still got in it?) In DAZ I only found Poser Pro Pack + Poser4, and I already have Poser 4.0.3 .

I wonder if they're thanking or laughing at all the people who purchased Poser 5 at the "special pre-order" price of $359.00? Order before Sept 1, 2002 and you get version 1.0- complete with all the bugs you can handle. Or, wait until Feb 2003 and you can save $39 and get Vue and get a program with far less bugs.

Carolly, you missed the point entirely. I HAVE Poser 5. Yet I mainly still use ProPack because for most of the stuff I do since Poser 5 is too slow and I don't need the new features all the time, even most of the time. And a 3rd party library manager simply is no substitute for what P5 gave us. And anyway we have to get Poser 4 users away from those damnable rsr's so we can all use pngs.

Anthony, I saw it at CL's store. What you have to do is go to "Products", select "More Info", select "Buy It", choose your Region, and it's near the bottom (hard version, e-versions for both PC and Mac). Worth it in every way if you want to do more with Poser. BYS