im currently using DAZ, but i was wondering, what is poser like?Is it roughly the same...radically different, or what?

its somewhat different. thers a faceroom for the standard poser figures(judy,don, james, jessie etc.) where u can manipulate their faces alot.
and a dynamic  cloth room aswel. even the rendering  results are different.  but daz is good tho:)

I used (struggled) with Poser 6, then 7 for about 4 years before moving to DS.  Now I'm a Studioaholic - I use it much more than I ever did Poser. One of the best things about DS is being able to locate products easily .  It used to take me ages to scroll through a list of names to find what I wanted in Poser, and as my runtime grew it started to take a seriously long and frustratng time! In Studio, because it's easy to change the names of products on the fly and because you can see images of the products, it's easier and faster to find the things I need to start being creative.
There are lots of other great things about DS  - such a using aim-at lights - again no guesswork - you know exactly where each light is pointing. It also has some seriously cool plug-ins available. Occasionally I open Poser for the cloth room and to use WW  before the latest stand-alone version.  I've never found a use for the Faceroom.  For me DS wins hands down.

Best idea is to try both and make your own decision. It seems a love hate type of thing. I use D/S but others love poser so give both a run...use both for different things if it suits.
Jen