So I went to take the plunge and buy P5. (Still working on 4 here but getting to use a friends P5 at his house.) I went to Amazon.com by accident and went "Woohoo, I can afford this!" when I saw the price of $139. Then I saw that they don't ship outside the US and went "Duh, wrong site." I went to Amazon.co.uk - expecting to see the price at around the same mark. Well imagine my surprise when I saw the exact same piece of software costing 375!!! That's TRIPLE what Amazon.com charge! Course, I'm stuck now. I'm not going to buy P5 at that price, no way no how. I can't order it from the US at a rate I can afford because they don't ship outside of the US. Yes, I could upgrade, but I much rather have the full, clean package. Especially when the upgrade is still more than the full version on Amazon.com. I guess I'm stuck with P4 for the foreseeable future because frankly... once you add 17.5% Vat to that, the prices differ by over $500! (if I use a 12% tax rate for the US) Lucky Americans. :( I did have to wonder at that pricing strategy tho. Could they not pass a discount like on Amazon.com on to customers in other places? sigh Sorry I had to rant. :( Silke

Can be brought direct from Curious Labs http://www.curiouslabs.com/ as a D/L (for $US199) However the D/L are 352 & 363 MB for program & content. I had no problems buying it from Australia and both D/L, I seem to recall, took lest than 2 hours (I am on cable) in total. It was the cheapest way of biying it from here in Australia. The only problem is the documentation is in PDF format and cannot be printed! Richard Taylor

The upgrade is the same as the full clean package. It is cheaper as you verify that you have an earlier version. It installs into its own directory, without touching your previous install.

About time the rest of the world had the benefits of those Amazon.com prices. You listening, Amazon / Curious Labs? This is the ONLY reason that I haven't bought Poser 5 yet. I'm considering buying in the US, shipping to 'someone I know' (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and getting them to send it on to me. Even if I end up paying the duty, it will be a bargain.

I just bought the download upgrade from Poser 4 to Poser 5 (Mac) from Egisys.de. (I live in Sweden.) They listed the price as 169 euros and 149 without the VAT. That's more expensive than the price in the US, but the difference without the VAT isn't that big. And I suppose Curiouslabs or Egisys can't do much about the VAT. About printing the documentation: I'm printing the regular manual right now. The Python manual won't print though as it is protected, so I complained at their website, filling in a form for tech support.

Try http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?sku=377195&SourceID=k2776 PC Connection ships overseas, but I don't know what kind of additional charges are tacked on. Details are at http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/shophelp/durord.asp#shipping

Bob's idea is good, and if you ship the cds seperate and only put $1 value i bet they get through ok, i've had a lot of NFR software sent for review and the only time they tryed to tax me was when it had a high value on the parcel..manual will cost a bit to send but you could print it like Marianne is, you probably wouldn't miss it for what its worth LOL..........Steve

Yeah but I don't have anyone in the US who can buy it for me lol. So that's a bit of a bummer. Richard, how much is the Aussie version of Poser 5? Because I'm almost certain that they will charge me the UK price, not the US price... sulks Silke

If a comapny from any other country send you P5, you will get charged a very hefty import tax, I recently bought something from the US and got charged more in import tax than the product was worth :( The only way around it is if the compaby who is sending stuff to you marks the value at under 35.. But its not many companies that will do that. I tried looking for P5 in PC stores, but they look at you like ur asking them to create a planet... they haven't got a clue.. and its not in there book of products... I mean our 'PC World' doesn't even sell PS7... PC World.. BHAAA more of a PC Shed If i see it at any other UK companies i will let you know

Here ya go Silke 189 with VAT http://www.transaction-one.com/gs/html/gs/f2/en/home.jsp?pubid=2 Who was it Simderella so we can avoid them like the plague ;o)....i've had loads sent when i used to do reviews and only amorphium (spelling?) did that to me, and it wasn't even the tax man it was the shipping company, i told them i'm not paying tax on an item i got for free and most definetly NOT paying it to a parcel company, if they want it get the tax office to get in touch, they let me off ;o)...then i found out they wanted it back LOL, i never did review it.....Oh i agree PC world is a joke i was looking in the art area yesterday ;o).....BTW Silke that url, the company used to be real good i bought quite a bit off them but haven't used them for about 3 years...Steve

Sorry just gave you full price.....its 136.16 to upgrade from P4 and 101.28 from PPP, thats plus VAT...Steve

Nowdays $US139 from http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/cgi-bin/shopping/secure_shopping-input_item-B00006IXA4-input_search_type-AsinSearch.html However to buy it in a shop I can't find it but to give you an idea Poser 4 Pro Pac is $AU569 in a Sydney bookshop . I paid about $AU350 for Poser 4 upgrade a few years ago Software is expensive ibn Australia, I mainly buy it on Ebay or overseas and (touch wood) have not had tp pay customs yet - Richard

I'm gonna try them Steve, thanks :) But yeah I know what you mean about import tax. I pre-ordered a game expansion from Sony and guess what... the tax and duty resulted in the expansion costing me nearly twice as much as it would have in the shops here. I also got Beta software delivered and ended up paying somewhere around 30 in Tax and Duty - for a FREE Beta CD, not even the actual software I was testing. It's truly sickening.

Ok scratch that. I don't want the upgrade. Yes yes I know you guys said it doesn't touch my Poser installation but I have had so many problems with software upgrades that I won't buy them anymore. I do not want to end up having to install the OLD program just to get the new program validated and rubbish like that. It also means I have to hang on to the old package for dear life every time I wipe my system. So.... No thank you. Won't touch it with a bargepole even if it says I only need the licence key. Don't care. Been there, done that, won't ever do it again. I ended up with too many screwy installs of perfectly legal software, just because the upgrade stunk to high heaven. So now I don't trust them anymore. Well meant, Steve, but I will not buy the upgrade and the full version will cost too much so ----- sorry Curious Labs. You know.... they do stuff like this, with whopping price differences like this, and they wonder why people crack the software and use it without paying for it? I buy my stuff, but I can truly understand why a lot of people will just pull it down from somewhere when buying it at a reasonable price is being made damn near impossible. If Poser were sold for around 100 for the full version, people would probably buy it rather than try and get it by other means. Same goes for Office and all the other packages out there. Sell it for 99 and there will be less pirated copies around. (I'm not saying everyone would buy it, but definitely more people would buy it.) So instead of selling one copy at 375 they might sell 5 copies at 99 because people can afford that. That's four less pirated copies floating around, the userbase is increased, and they'll have made nearly 125 more in the end. Ok that makes sense to me... maybe not to others, but I swear the way to combat Piracy is to lower the price.

They aren't upgrades in that sense Silke, unless they changed how they do things they just check you have a SN and sell you the full package at an upgrade price.....it might come without a box but you get the full cd and all...Steve