Just out of curiosity, if I have the opportunity to upgrade from Poser 5 to Poser 7, should I do it? I'm very comfortable with the Poser 5 interface and the way it's all laid out. I'd rather not have to re-learn where all my tools and commands are, if they've been moved and changed. Also, my favorite female figures are Judy (Poser 5 female) and Posette (Poser 4 female).  They're easy to use, look good, and I didn't have to spend a fortune to get a lot of nice clothes, and things for them. But they came with Poser 5 (apparently a lot of the content was from Poser versions 1-5). If I upgrade to Poser 7, will it include all the content from the previous versions of Poser as well? Or would Posette and Judy be over-written?
And not just those 2 figures, but I've got a ton of runtime (clothes, props, etc, etc) and I'm worried that I might lose it.
Sorry to be so wordy, but I guess the bottom line is:
What would be the benefits of upgrading to Poser 7?

Arrowhead

The interface and everything are the same, so the only thing you'd have to learn are the new features.
IMO, the duplicate feature and the multiple undo that they added alone are worth upgrading for.

You wouldn't lose anything because you could link your P5 runtime to your P7 so your content would still be where you have it now and how you have it set up now.
Poser 5 was the first version of Poser I owned and it isn't in the same league as 6 or 7 IMO!
Also if you have a multithreaded processor or dual core system then Poser 7 makes use of it and renders much better and quicker and handles textures and memory better so no more OOm messages!

I've seen "IMO" mentioned twice... what is it?

IMO = In My Opinion

HELL YES!

Oh, I gotcha. geez do I feel dumb. Wheatpenny, a multiple "undo" would indeed be  a great feature! You mentioned a duplicate feature... what does it do?

P5 really takes a lot of hits, and in truth, most of them are well deserved. Its original release was as buggy as a New York deli. But on the other hand it was absolutely a quantum leap forward, both in content and features. I still occasionally use it, mostly because it was the last version not to suffer from user input delay. Both 6 and 7 have an annoying one or two second time gap between executing a command and actually seeing it performed in the view port. That drives me crazy.

That delay is because it's storing the undo information.

And P7 inculdes all P6's advancements, the affore mentioned one, point lights, much imporved lighting and opengl display, multithreading for dual core (or more processors), and the morph brush tool, which is great for fixing minor stuf, without resorting to magnets.

I can't even stand going back to P6, and can;t imagine having to go back to P5 any more.

Once you get used to new tech, going back is always difficult.

The duplicate figure makes a copy of the selected object.

Poser 7 has animation layers. You know how layers work in photoshop? Well it's the same idea except for animation. You can take a fixed pose and "layer" on a motion animation.

For example you want an animation of a person carying a torch. Start with a torch pose. then layer on a walk animation. Now "erase" the animation for the arm by deleting those keys and the torch pose will show through.

you can edit the Poser.xrc file in the Poser7/runtime/ui/ directory to change your hot keys to nearly anything on your pull down menus.

I went from P5 to P7 myself and found quite a lot of welcome new features. Much improved lighting abilities (though still not 'perfect') very much improved. 

Many onther features also, already mentioned.

As theFixer pointed out, you can add your Poser 5 runtime to the library list so you won't lose or have to rearrange any of your P5 content.

Of course you will need to reset any personal preferences as far as Launching to a Prefered State goes, but that's been pretty much a given when upgrading to any of the newer versions from a previous one.