1. I have Poser 5, love it - was thinking about upgrading and would like to know if subsequent versions of Poser (like Pose 7) is backwards compatible? Would (or should) everything I've purchased for Poser 5 work with poser 7?
               * for products to purchase I always see "works with Poser 5, not sure about Poser 6" or whatever...

2. It seems as though Poser was originally created for the Mac... but now it seems more geared towards the PC... any ideas on which system is better for Poser? I have it for the Mac and it's really frustrating converting files etc.
      * I haven't gotten Poser 7 yet but was considering purchasing a PC - (I have final cut pro for the Mac which is why I have a mac) however, with Vista taking up 2 gigs of memory I'm thinking Poser would run S-L-O-W on the PC.. unless you have 8 gigs of RAM!

Thoughts? Thanks!

Poser 6 and 7 are backwards compatible.
Conversion is not necessary, as long a people create .png instead of
.rsr for their products.
Most are using the .png format when creating stuff for Poser 5 and upwards.
I'd say it doesn't make a difference which system you are running Poser on.
We have Poser 5, 6 and 7 running on a PC (XP pro) and an Mac G5 (OSX 10.4).
Don't know about a PC running Vista.

Even most Python scripts that wouldn't run on a Mac using Poser 5 will work
in Poser 6 and/or 7.

So I'd say you're better off with a PC when using Poser 5 and it doesn't really matter
with Poser 6 and 7.

Ah I see.. thanks for that one. Here's a secondary question:

What is the most important factor when rendering?

• Processor speed
• RAM
• Hard drive speed

I'm looking at building a system specifically for rendering this is the rough spec: 2.40 Ghz Core 2 Duo; 4GB Ram; 250 Gig 7200RPM hard drive

Would that be sufficient to render 5 & 10 second scenes? I had a laptop with Poser 5 and the longest scene I rendered was about 45 frames.. took overnight but keep in mind my laptop is 1.75GHZ (single proc) with 512 mb RAM and a 4200RPM hard drive so it was lacking on ALL fronts.

Is there one thing I need more than another? (which is where the PC/MAC question came from) Also, is a poser file a poser file? Like, if I created a PZ3 (I think that's the format) on my laptop, would I be able to transfer that file to another PC to render it?

THANKS!

don't worry too much about OS X vs. windows. under leopard, if ya decide ya gotta go with windows, ya can install some versions on yer mac. if negotiations go as hoped, we'll be able to install any version of vista on them, as well. I also heard a rumour about an hack to allow that, pending completion of the deal (if any), but would advise against anybody using it. poser files are sposeta be cross-platform now. there are some glitches, but in general the files can be used without conversion or edition. IIRC, P7 SR1 re-introduced network checking, and that may mean only running one copy of poser concurrently on yer LAN.