Poser 7 is worth the upgrade.
For me, the most important improvement in Poser 7 is that it can handle far more complex scenes, especially when you run it in WinXP 64 bit.
Python support is significantly better, SR2 worked out a couple of very annoying Tkinter bugs and now it's fine. There are methods to handle dynamic cloth, materials, and more.
Dynamic hair handling has been improved.
You'll love point lights, ambient occlusion, image based lighting with HDRI maps.
The morph brush takes some getting used to, but it's perfect for fixing up joints.
OpenGL preview tends to be significantly faster than the SreeD preview that Poser 5 depends upon when setting up a scene. Depending on the graphics card, of course.
For animators, there's animation layers, and OpenGL rendering will give you fast animation renders with decent quality.

As for female figures, the P7 female, Sydney, is'nt bad at all. Somewhat limited when it comes to morphs, but she's fairly OK.
I actually like the P6 male, James (also included with Poser 7). The P6 female, Jessie, has strange proportions (very large hands and feet, upper arms too short, forearms too long), but with a bit of scaling and tapering the worst can be worked out.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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