Carrara is not that expensive, like $99 or whatever to upgrade (I don't recall the exact price). But I agree - I would be disappointed if they decided to bring Poser's rendering speed and realism up to that of Lightwave or Carrara, since they might use that as a reason to jack the price way up. I have been an adherent, for many years now, of maintaining Larry Weinberg's original idea, i.e. Poser as a posing tool and artists' aid, to keep the cost and complexity down. If we want a top-notch render, we can always export the figure to a rendering app, once it's posed. The charm of Poser is that it's very easy for anyone to learn the techniques of posing a figure and doing quick test renders, assuming they have a stable installation and aren't having memory problems that force them to shut down and restart periodically. When they added the materials room and shader nodes, this made it rather complex and alot harder for 3D newbies to learn, and diverged significantly from Weinberg's intent in my opinion. Now it's more of a shader geek's tool than something an artist with no prior 3D experience can easily master.