At the risk of getting flamed, I think a lot of people are missing the point here. E-Frontier is a business and they have the right to set whatever pricing structure they want. There is no law stating that they HAVE to even offer an upgrade price. If they decide to give previous software away and  then  allow people to upgrade from it then that is their perrogative (in fact it is down-right generous to new customers). I'm sure new users to Poser are very thankful to E-Frontier that they have been allowed to do this. Why should we be annoyed at their generosity. Like someone said before in this thread its like the parable of the vineyard. People are annoyed at the fact that someone else is getting a better deal than them. Well, consider this, if you had waited for Poser 5 to become free you'd have never had the chance play with it all this time so you have had a couple of years head-start with the software for your money over those poor people who had to wait.

For the record, my impatience to play with the new software has made me buy the Poser upgrades  each time simply because nothing else gave me the ability to pose and generate portrait images for that price. However, this time I am going to wait as I feel Cararra 5.1 gives be far better renders than Poser. With Poser 5 and Carrara 5.1 you have everything you need to create fantastic renders, and use all the superior content for Vicky and Michael at DAZ and renderosity (lets face it the figures supplied with Poser itself are a bit of a joke - if realism is what you are after then forget them!) Even if P7 was free, I'd have to see something very special in it to waste any more disk space and the pictures of the new content is not even mildly rocking my boat!

Good luck to all the new Poser users out there and congratulations on picking up a bargain!