Hi, I have poser 4, a mac computer, and I live in australia. I just had a sudden almost irresistable urge to buy poser 5 but when I went to their site there's no difference in price between the download version and the boxed version of the poser 4 to 5 upgrade for macs. I presume with the boxed version I would get a manual? I think it's really weird that the boxed version isn't cheaper. But at least I would save time and postage if I downloaded. Any advice, much appreciated. Love esther

What is your computer crashes? It is always good to have a disk.

Buy the boxed version Esther. As PheonixRising says it is better to have any software on CDROM rather than relying on hard discs. Way way back in history(in a galaxy far far away etc;-)) I was working on a large Comic Setter file on an Amiga 2000 (remember Amigas?) saved everything off to hard disc went to bed, got up next morning turned on the computer and had a cheery blue sign saying please insert your boot disk - whole hard disc had scrunched. No backups. from then on I have always backed up everything and had original disks and downloaded patches on cdrom.

If you have a CD writer, you could always burn your own disk.

I burned some stuff, went to get it two years later and the disk was bad. lol

ester, I believe that the price difference comes when you pay for shipping. Curious Labs has to pay for hundreds of megabytes of download or making the inexpensive to produce CDs and paper, so I could guess these come out about the same.

I am, however with narsil and PheonixRising, that CD-R's don't do very well as backups. I recheck just burned CD's, but they still go bad, sometime as soon as a month later.

So, if you find that the shipping is almost as much as the product, or if you don't want to wait for the month it'll take to get there, be sure there are lots of copies!

Best of luck!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=1524054

Whichever version you go for; make sure you're buying from the US webstore in US dollars, not the 'international' (actually Egisys in Germany) webstore in Euros. At current exchange rates you'll pay twice as much in the German store.

As far as CD-R for long term backup goes, they can be reliable if you're very careful with them. CD-R uses the UV from the lazer source to strip the colour fom a layer of Azo dye. Azo's are the same chemicals used on old fashioned blueprints and prolonged exposure to, even very low levels, of light will degrade them fairly rapidly. Exposure to strong sunlight will wreck a CD-R in seconds. Also, don't write or stick labels on them, the silver topside is actually the back of the recording layer and very easilly scratched or delaminated.

John

I just purchased Poser 5 from Amazon.com for $169.00 and this includes the shipping. It takes a week to 2 weeks to get it but it is well worth it. I just ordered it..hadn't received it, yet! Still have a week...can't wait!!.. I thought about downloading it myself... then i remembered the time my harddrive crashed. lol Live and learn! Besides, I want the manuals and the actual box.

dbit, unfortunately it's a very different story outside the US.

Here in England, Amazon.co.uk want 350 GBP, around $620, for P5. Amazon.com won't ship software outside the States, though CL will ship to Europe, the airfreight adds around $100.

John

Attached Link: http://pcbuyersguide.com/hardware/storage/CD-R_reliability_reports.html

WAY TO GO Rat !!! You da man! ;=]

That link makes interesting, if rather worrying, reading. For no very good reason I've always used Verbatim, so didn't know about the alternative dyes. As all types rely on changing colour rapidly with UV exposure to record data though, keeping them in a dark place has got to be a good idea.

Rattler, thanks, but I already bought the download for $119 and, don't tell the taxman, didn't pay any duty on it. The amazon.co.uk price includes UK sales tax at 17.5%, not really enough to explain the huge difference is it?

John

Geep The is now a futher complication. There are C-D CD-R CD-RW DVD-R DVD-RW and now DVD+R DVD+RW and the DVD+ will not run on the DVD- hardware and viceversa. Though thet do have hardware that will run both. The DVD+ is suppose to be better? Remember 78's-33 1/3rd's, (45's were somewhare around) BETA-VHS, 4-track-2-track, records-cassettes, another media war.

rattler Be careful, you may be doing something illegal. Here in the US of A, a women got fined and served some time because she put coins in parking meters as a good deed to the people that had expired meters. she was "interfering with the law" Mess with taxes, and international laws, etc, etc and you may wind up with the IRS, CIA FBI, (and god knows what else), knocking at your door. Sorry to be a spoil sport. :O(

Hi Phily, Yes, you are absolutely correct. Media, like almost everything else, is constantly evolving; hopefully to a better state. CDs have come a long way and will probably go alot farther than they are today. Can you remember the 8" floppy disk? It held a whopping 180KB !!! WOW! That's only 0.18MB ... you can't even save a simple render in that much space today. Well, maybe NaySayGuy could ... hge only needs 30 or 40 bytes because his renders are pretty simple. <-----(just like him!) Then, someone figured out how to record at DD (double density). Now we're up to 360KB per 8" disk. Then someone else figured out how to do DS (double sided). Now we're up to 720KB on a single disk! WOW, again !!! So, we have a whopping 720KB on a DS/DD 8" floppy disk. Then someone came along with the 5" floppy disk and the 8" disks started to disappear. After that, the 5" was replaced with the 3" (hard shell) disk. And gradually, the 5" disks started disappearing, also. Some software (for awhile) came with both 5" and 3" floppys to cover the market. A few more steps forward ... and the Compact Disk (CD) arrives. Now, we have about 750MB on a single CD, so one piece of plastic replaces a whole stack of floppy disks and programs that required 8-10 floppies can now be put on a single CD with room for ... the software to GROW even more ... and it does (God bless the programmers) etc., etc. Then we replaced (sortof) the CD with the DVD. Then we replaced the DVD with the DVD+. Then we replaced the DVD+ with the _____________. (you fill in the blank) ;=] Hardware and software have been constantly playing leapfrog since the puter was invented and, I'm sure, will continue to do so. Enuf of my ramblings ... More whine anyone? <---(from the movie "Educating Ritra") (except she didn't spell it that way) ;=] cheers, dr geep ;=] P.S. Now, can you guess my age? ;=]

104 (Just a Guess) :OP They say a media format is lucky if it lasts 10 years. The problem in the future will be the lack of hardware to play the old media, (we have that problem now). Wasn't it Bill Gates who asked what anybody would do with more than 64K? I looking forward to what 3D programs will look like 10 years from now.

104? ........ You're a little bit high ... but some days I feel close to that. ;=]

Well, I'm only 35 and I remember all that stuff. I remeber bitching a blue streak when I had to pay $2.50 for single 8" floppy to use in my Commal class in High school. At the time 5.25 inch disks had dropped to under a buck each and I had just ordered 100 mixed color ones to split up with my friends. Everyone in the class looked at me like I talking Klingon. Today it's nearly impossible to 3.5" Double Density Disks, and my Palm can run all the Commodore programs I had back in the day. 64MB is HUGE when the program was designed to work in 64K. Hell, my first Hard drive was 40MB and cost $899 dollars!!!!! My Palm has a 256MB SD CARD that I could lick and stick on a letter and I got it for $60.

Can you spell A-T-A-R-I ? How 'bout them "Space Invaders" huh? ;=]

As I sit here now typing this, I've got a 128Mb USB flash keyring drive in one pocket, and a credit card sized camera with a 128Mb smartmedia in the other. That's 256Mb of non-volatile media in my pockets ATM and, all told - including UK taxes - cost me about the same as I spend on cigarettes in a week. So what's the life expectancy of technologies like CD-R, DVD(plus or minus)R, even HD's etc, etc...

As to 3D software, all I want is that it should read my mind, is that so much to ask?

John

No.

Good.

Just don't ................. hold yer breath. ;=]

Did I mention that I'm a programmer? We haven't done breath-holding since the Win 3.1 SDK, bad for the health, you know.

Actually I'll be REALLY WORRIED when software starts to read my mind.

I'll probably start using the nudity flag a lot more often.

Hey whit, "Did I mention that I'm a programmer?" Oh, really? ..... What kind of programs do you watch? ;=]

French 'art' films mainly, as you asked.

Frankly I don't see how any of this can be helpful to Esther, whose question we're attempting to answer.

To her I would say that, whilst I have been well satisfied in the past with quick downloads over the internet, there is a particular satisfaction in getting your hands on a real box, especially when the accompanying manuals are well done and detailed.

John

Um, sorry whit ... the ol' Doc is feelin' "frisky" today and you ... just happened to "be there." ;=] <----------- (slinks back off to the "lurking" pit)

Geep, if that's how you read it, either I wrote it wrong, or you read it wrong. John

Hi, thanks so much everybody. So is there a good manual with the boxed poser 5 version? Love esther

No John, You wrote it right ... I read it right ... I was just bein' stoopid ... 'cuz it's sooooooo easy to do. 'k? No hard feelin's, I hope. ;=]

re: "... good manual..." I'll let a more edukated person than myself answer that question. ;=]

Geep, thanks a bunch, certainly no hard feelings here. Esther, I only have the download, but that includes a PDF of the documentation and, frankly, it's even less useful than the Poser 4 manual. Actually, it probably has enough pages that you could make 2 doorstops AND prop a wobbly table leg with it. So, that's an improvement. John

well if they both have the very same manual then maybe I should just get the download, and back it up on CDs and hardrives and my dad's computer too. Love esther

esther Please don't forget to download the ServiceRelease3 patch. Install Poser5, (do not open) then install the SR3 patch. Close down the computer, then start it up again. THEN open Poser5

esther Please check with the experts about my install information.

Hehe, now I'm worried! Well I have a mac, so will it already have all the patches installed? If I do get the download version I'll have to get my dad to download it for me as I don't have broadband. He's just going to the site to try and work out how much it's going to cost to download. Love esther

Hi, I decided to get the download. I haven't got broadband and my net cuts off after 4 hours, so I asked my 82 year old daddy (who doesn't use things like poser) to download it for me. He has a thing where he gets a certain number of megabytes and then any extra he downloads he has to pay for, and it happens at the end of the month. He wanted to download the application tonight and the contents CD at the beginning of next month which would save us a lot of money. So I went to curious labs and ordered the download (curious lab staff are all away but that part still works). Anyway it's the upgrade from poser 4 that I'm buying and they took my money then asked me for the serial number of my previous poser 4 version. I typed it in, but now it says it's invalid and they just give me an email addy to contact where they won't be until the 5th of January. I have the genuine poser 4 which was fedexed from curious labs when I first bought poser, and I my box for poser 4 has one of their stickers on it with their print out of my serial number. It starts with the letter X. I even tried typing the zeroes as ohs, and also tried with spaces instead of the dashes and also I tried using the underneath dash instead of the in the middle dash, but nothing helps. I think I'm not going to get poser 5 this week am I, and it's my week off work too. This is really bad. I just thought someone might be able to tell me somthing eg if the serial needs psr in front of it or something. Love esther (sob sob)

Hi Rattler, I wish I'd taken you up on your kind offer earlier. If I hadn't wanted to get it this week while I am on holiday, I would have too. Thing is I was going to wait for DAZ studio. My poser 4 is running very slowly now in classic since my operating system upgraded to panther, and poser 5 runs natively in OSX as does studio, and no one has answered my question from daz studio or from vue d'esprit if the 2 will be compatible and I always use poser with vue, so I decided to bite the bullet and get P5. I'll just have to be patient I think. BTW in case anyone asks, I've never given my serial number out to anyone else. this is some kind of curious lab glitch. Love esther

Yes, I think the same thing. That daz studio will be a while away still, and then I may still not be able to import into vue where I do all my rendering. I did a search of the forums and this serial number problem occured when CL brought out the non mac version of poser 5 first, and they said it was a bug that they had fixed. Hmmm. Love esther

Hi, guess what, CL wrote back to me, even though it says on their blurb that they're still away. They gave me a new serial number so now I can download my poser 5! Yipppeee. Love esther

All "good" things come to those ... ;=]

gosh I didn't have to wait long. So hopefully I will have it all downloaded by 2nd of january. Love esther PS then the scary bit.