"Poser has its problems, significant ones even... but these threads never deal with Poser's real underlying problems."

Never is way too strong a term. Maybe "often", but not never. Heck, most of the threads I have seen even acknowledge that the compositing, posing and lighting allows for artistic expression and skill.

"na, its just because we pay 150 dollars for an entire application vs. a couple grand, and can produce good results with it. (that is entirely dependent on the artist)"

Hardly. They could spend the same $$$ at any time (the routinely spend it in plug ins and so on) and turn out arbitrary numbers of Vicki in temple poses... at least the ones with any skill could. Most of the decent ones wouldn't even need to buy Poser - just use Vicki's OBJ and buy a texture.

Compounding the ignorance of many of them with our own solves nothing. To say "bah, they jsut feel ripped off!" is just - naive (to be extremely polite).