Personally i'd get Poser 4 & Pro Pack, Later down the line you'll probably start making your own stuff for use in poser and find that pro pack can speed up alot of the little tasks in poser. Another Benifit of Pro Pack is that you can see mulitpul camera views at once rather then just one, and work in the different ones without having to go below, switch cameras and wait for it to process it. There is a demo of the Poser Pro Pack at the curiouslabs website that you can download and try. It lets you see all the features in the program. Best to try before you buy. Sadly they don't have any demo version of poser 5, one thing thats detoured me from getting it. Perhaps in the future they will get a Poser 5 demo out (but im not holding my breath for it) so those of us who like to see upfront and personal how the program works we can. One other Small thing too, upgrading from the Poser Pro Pack is cheeper then upgrading from poser 4 to poser 5 so if you deside to later on it will save you a little money there. Poser Pro Pack can also read compressed files, I've failed to be able to get Poser 4 to read any so im pretty much feeling that it can't be done. So Poser Pro Pack to me seems the better investment, More compatability with recent marketplace items, cheeper to upgrade, more functions then poser 4. Just my thoughts anyhow.