I have a 2.66Ghz Dual processor Dual Core Mac Pro with 1 gig of RAM (256meg Nvida card)
I have a Macbook Pro 2Ghz dual core (32 bit) with 1 gig of RAM but can go to 2gig (256meg Nvida card)
I have a HP Media Center with Intel P4 w/HT (single core) with somewhere between 1 gig and 3 gig of RAM (Have to see if my old memory fits) X300 128meg video card.

Poser 5 ran badly on the Macs I have had in the past.
Poser 6 runs ok on the HP I guess... I haven't tried 7 on it yet.

I am using 7 on my mom's 3000+ AMD with 512 meg of ram and no dedicated video ram. It seems BLAZINGLY fast for some reason.

It's time for me to buy my own copy of 7... should I go with the Mac and hope it's better then the past versions (I had 4 and 5 and hardly ever use them) or should I use the HP or the macs running windows XP as a platform for 7.

One good thing about using the Macs (either in OS X or Windows XP) is that I have a 30 inch and 22 inch monitor hooked up to them. The HP doesn't have dual link DVI so it can't push the 30 inch monitor.The problem with the Mac Pro specifically is that RAM prices is OVERLY expensive. It's over 1k to replace what I had in my previous G5 machine!!!

What would you guys do?

Well, if you're concerned about performance, P7 Mac has been compiled as a Universal Binary, so it's running faster than before on those platforms now.  And it should be able to use both cores.

Not sure if there are any compatibility issues with ATI's graphics chips.  I'm firmly entrenched in the Nvidia camp, myself.

Also, P5 ran for garbage on the Mac but P6 was better. P5 was notoriously slow and I dreaded using it when I did.

I have the same hardware as originalplaid, except I have a lot more RAM, and P7 is so much faster than P6 on it that it's hard to believe, notably renders, which are 5+ times faster. Judging from the comments I've seen posted here about P7 for Windows, you should go with P7 for Mac if you want to avoid many of the crashes and freezes that even high-end Windows machines seem to experience with it. P7 on my Macs has been rock solid, stable and extremely fast. P6 was not universal binary and had to run in Rosetta, so that's NOT any kind of representation at all of how P7 will run on originalplaid's hardware. It's any easy choice -- go with P7 for Mac. S

I did get P7 for the mac after some SERIOUS effort. I couldn't find my serial numbers for ANY of the five copies I owned before!!! To make it worse my IBM wouldn't fire up!!! So it took awhile to get a machine together enough to boot and copy down the serial

RANT: I typed in my serial without logging in the first time and it KNEW it was registered to someone... after logging in it accepted the number since it was registered to ME. SO WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST LET ME BUY THE PROGRAM IF THEY KNEW WHAT SERIAL WENT WITH MY ACCOUNT?!?! I wouldn't have to jump through all the hoops!

First glance? There is a WEIRD opengl preview issue... at times things like hair and shirts etc. disappear based on where the camera is. Not completely, just in random chunks. I rendered it when it was like this and everything was ok. That is strange. Didn't happen on the pc copy I was playing with.

FAST YEP. I can multitask and read the forums etc while it renders. Doesn't seem to tax the processors for some reason though. Nothing ever really maxs out in Activity Monitor when rendering. um. Strange.

Thanks to everyone!

Change the settings in Preferences and it will use all your processing power. P7 on Core Duo and OS X is great, sure SR1 is needed but sooooo much better than P5/6.