It is always a tough choice when people ask whether they should buy one thing over another, especially when both things are highly desirable. In this case it is even more difficult because as far as I am concerned, both things are not only desirable, but indespensable. Additionally, if a choice must be made for FINANCIAL reasons, there would be different recommendations than if the choice were to be made for AESTHETIC reasons. If the choice is financial, here are a few things to consider before making your decision. 1) The cost of P5 is currently about $99 to $149. The cost of the current set of Mil Figures (Mike2, Vic2, Mil kids and baby) is around $200 WITHOUT basic clothing or texture packs. The clothed and textured Mil family will end up costing about $350-400, and then you might want to add a few hairstyles for another $100. (see note about Bantam3D hair below). If you opt for the Mil family, you are still stuck with the P4 rendering engine which is OK but not in the same league as the p5 Firefly, Bryce or Vue. 2) Poser 5 comes with a complete set of family figures with textures, hair and basic clothing for all of them included with the price. The P5 Firefly renderer is capable of renders just as good as Bryce or Vue (but there is a learning curve with each of them before you will get the best results - NONE of them makes great renders without a lot of work on your part). 3) Flexibility: If you need figures that will enable you to easily create a large variety of personalities (very different faces and body-types) here is another plus for P5. The face room makes it a snap to create an endless variety of characters without needing an external modeling program. Michael and Vicky, unfortunately always look like Michael and Vicky unless you want to spend a lot of time (and more money) making morphs or buying some of the better pre-made ones. 4) Time: How important is your time? DAZ figures are great, but they take longer to set up and longer to render than P5 figures for a couple of reasons. They are larger meshes and they have more morph channels. Again, you can spend more money to buy pose and morph sets to do the work for you or you can do it yourself. One great advantage of the P5 figures is that they can use all of the existing P4 figure poses with excellent results, and as I said above, morphing is a snap in P5 with the face room and morph putty tools (specifically designed for the P5 figures, but don't work too well on the DAZ figures). 5) And about mesh size versus quality, there are TWO different approaches taken by CL (Poser 5) and DAZ (Vicky3). Poser 5 introduced SDS (sub division surfaces) to achieve the same result (higher potential mesh detail) that DAZ achieves with higher polygon count. But the high-polygon DAZ version3 figures are so large that they they will choke most systems if they have all the morphs installed, so DAZ introduced the morph INJection and REMove process to help keep the total figure weight (mesh plus morph channels) down at render time - bottom line: you will either spend more time injecting/removing morphs or waiting for your render (if your system can handle it). 6) State-of-the-art: Is it important for you to have the highest technology (longer life before obsolete)? If so, consider that the DAZ version 2 figures are on their way out. Their replacements (vicky3 and Mike3) bring new technology (INJection morphs), but their meshes themselves are old technology (brute force high polygon detail) - Do we really NEED 50,000 polygons to get realistic facial wrinkles?. On the other hand Poser 5 with SDS and displacement mapping is state-of-the-art, and potentially a superior alternative to high polygon meshes - faster renders, PLUS greater detail and smaller file sizes in the long run. Unfortunately, we are only learning now how to realize this potential with P5 so there is little yet to show of this capability... but it will come as people discover how to use SDS and displacement mapping together to create extremely high detail with lower polygon counts. If your choice is more about aesthetics, then there are good arguments (pro and con) stated above to help weigh your decision. But if your choice is financial, I think there is only one way to go. Poser 5 gives much more bang for the buck on an initial purchase, but you will want to keep saving up for those DAZ figures eventually.