Don't confuse the task with the method, xenophonz. And realize, as well, that by the time Apollo launched most space technology was fairly mature; we have made only incremental improvements since on the majority of the technologies Apollo used. Were we to attempt an identical mission today, we would likely use vastly similar hardware. Same for engine performance...even fuel ignition and electronics provide only small gains. The majority of the high-tech stuff under the hood of a modern car is not to make it more efficient; it is to make it less polluting. And as for the mileage -- my 1986 Toyota gets better mileage than most of what I share the road with. Why? Because it weighs a third of what those SUV's do! Aerospace is generally too smart to use bleeding-edge technology. They'd prefer stuff that has enough history behind it for there to be a solid empirical understanding of how it functions under stress. Look for similar in other high-stress, production oriented environments. Advances are costly. There is re-training, and there is the constant risk of being the first to discover some new bug. Taking on a new technology is a calculated risk; you hope the productivity gains projected will be larger than the productivity losses you can't predict. The problem facing small computer users -- like the members of this forum -- is that the computer industry is supporting itself on a program of constant obsolescence. We haven't made anything but incremental improvements to word-processing since the first memory typewriter. If you are typing a memo or writing a book the best software and computer out there can't give you more than a few percent faster. We've been "good enough" for emails for over a decade; the lag involved is human eye, and spam filtering, not the network speed or the number of bells on the mail server. Some tasks ARE vastly improved. The ability to render increasingly realistic scenes for film, for instance, or to calculate interactions on a molecular level, and many other tasks, simply weren't practical a decade ago. As a for-instance, engineering is moving swiftly away from the older empirical solutions for certain classes of problem, and increasingly into forms of finite-element analysis -- some of those are run on some of the best of today's supercomputers, but it is quickly moving down to a level where an average mold-making shop can leverage those methods. But what the industry has made a pattern is this constant round of improvements. New hardware begats new OS to run on it, which begats new applications, which demand faster hardware...and the cycle goes around again. Five steps down the road, you have a vastly more powerful computer that does several things vastly better....but still creates and sends an email almost exactly as well. What 3d software often forgets...with that long, heavy, and probably spiked gaming tail wagging the rest of the dog...is that the prime choke-point remains the human operator. Our "productivity," as individual artists, and our ability as ARTISTS to interact with the material and shape it to our own internal vision, is largely independent of any marvels of computer speed or monitor size or how fast our card can do real-time ray-tracing. That has always been the underlying problem with Poser, as it is with several other consumerist art applications (I think particularly of Garage Band, for instance!) -- whereas the software is driven to create more and more polished piles of shit with an easy press of a button, it is the chore of the artist to do what they wish to do, often despite the software. In a way the argument that better renders are automatically better art is like arguing that oils always trump watercolor always trump pastels always trump ink always trumps pencil. And by extension, no picture could possibly be as good as a movie (pictures do not move or have sound), and no novel could possible be as good as a picture. And of course the other buried assumption is that it is better to do a paint-by-numbers that has been blocked by a professional, than to paint a scene from scratch. At the reductio ad absurdum of this line of thinking, since few of us can paint as well as the Dutch Masters, we are better off returning the oils to the counter and buying a big glossy book of reproductions instead. In short, we don't always want those things a powerful computer can add. As a layout person I may just want a black border. A drop-shadow may not add anything artistically to it, even though the latest and greatest version of PhotoShop can now do ten million kinds of drop-shadow, and my Unrepentium XVIII can run the algorithm faster than I can hit the "enter" key. As a writer, I am aware there are items of software out there that will regularize my grammar, outline my plots for me, generate my names for me....but does any of this make MY writing better? Or does it simply create generic crap that has little to do with me and my voice? And we come full-circle to Poser 4. I have Poser 4 installed. Due to that merry-go-round of the software and hardware giants I can no longer run it without a reboot -- and that turns off several of my other tools (on the other hand, it does give back to me PhotoShop 4 -- which has all the functions I use frequently, and none of the clutter of functions I've never found a use for. Somehow, red-eye reduction has never played a part in any texture map I've created!) So I mostly use Poser 6 now. It is less buggy than 5, but other than that, for me it was a pointless upgrade. The files it produces are a huge pain from the point of view of an independent content creator, and half the functions are just plain silly, but I do like having a cloth engine handy. It is, for better or worse, what I chose and probably would chose freely (if operating systems gave me that option.) But I understand, respect, and support those who have realized that Poser 4 is better for the tasks they face. I also own a handsaw. Although I use power tools more frequently, it is a very, very good handsaw (Japanese of course) and is in those special times the more appropriate tool. Only in the world of software would I be physically prevented from using my handsaw after I had bought my first power tool, and laughed at in forums when I complained about what had happened.