I just bought Poser5. I hadn't read any reviews or anything, and I seen a couple posts below that say it has bugs and its slow. Should I just stay with 4 or goto 5? I need to know fast so I can take it back. -Mike

The service packs have stabilized Poser 5 immensely. It should be fine now. It's a bit slower than ProPack overall (switching rooms, screen refreshing) but not glacially so. You do need lots of ram for it though. I'd say minimum 512. But, besides the new features, the library structure is much better than 4--especially if you have a lot of content. And you can actually read the parameter dials.

I only have 256megs of memory, so I'm sure it would be really slow for me.

I'm afraid only 256 megs would be frustrating for Poser 5. :(

If you can add memory, go ahead and do that and keep Poser 5. I have 512 megs and I can do anything I can bear to wait on. I will say that the learning curve for first buyers (a year ago) was steep. I am only now actually able to use all of the features that come with Poser 5. Now, however, there are great tutorials around here for Poser 5. I'd say that not everything has been spelled out by friendly Rosity people quite yet, but all the main stuff has been figured out. I would say to expect a certain level of frustration with Poser 5, but I am very happy with the "printed on the box" improvements.

If you can't buy the extra ram, I would stay with 4. I have 5 and 512 ram. Anything less than that would be like watching grass grow!:)

buy a 1 gig stick and put that in slot 0. Try to match the ram with the ram you already have. Go read the manufacturer on the chipset and chipset number. Talk to the tech at the store about matching and you'll be able to just pop it in. Then, with a gig and a quarter, you'll do fine.

A large hard drive is about as essential as having at least 512MB of RAM. I'm working with a computer that has only 128MB of RAM and a 27 GB hard drive that is always filling up. That is extremely frustrating.

Do'nt even think of not trying to get used to P5, you'll regret it someday. It renders nicer, and has many new techniques. Do'nt lissen to these posts. The only thing that makes a differance in render times is your CPU. My Main machine only has 256 and I was fine. In fact it is down right now and I've been doing fine with a celeron 400, 64Mbs or RAM, and a 1 GB Virtual Memory allocation. Look into your version of windows for this feature! If you are interested in more RAM though, be sure to check out pricewatch.com on your way over to E-Bay.com. If you can use SDRAM 512MBs is like $30!

I essentially agree with you Odiemance on the virtues of P5....I have it....I like it. However, I have a 1.7ghz Pentium 4 and 512 SDRAM. I run Windows XP. It works fine on my machine, but the rendering is slow and when your runtimes get big, that slows it down even more. It really depends, I think, on your "patience level". If you can tolerate a slower response to your tasking, then you can probably run P5 at the minimum requirements recommended by CL: Windows 98/ME, 500 Mhz pentium, 128 ram, 24bit color at 1024x768 resolution and 500 mb free hard disk space. Even CL "recommends" at least a 700 mhz processor and 256 mb of ram. By the way, you will not be able(from what I've read on numerous posts)to run P5 if your resolution is less than 1024x768. So.....I would recommend that the poster take all the posts into consideration and decide if he/she is a patient person who does not require everything to "quick". I do prefer "quick"......which is why I would not recommend less than 512 ram.

OOOPs, don't tell anyone I'm doing the impossible. I have my Dad's computer, and he is "visually challenged." The desktop is 800x600, and I'm using an Intel Celeron 800 mhz with a 30GB hard drive and 128MB of RAM. The Poser workspace is rather cluttered, and sometimes Poser 5 absolutely refuses to render some images. No matter what I do, I'm always running out of hard drive space.