I started using DS at version 2.1 and it's starting to be a serious rival to poser (or at least Poser 6 the last version I have used).

I find their "material room" interface to be much more intuitive than posers, plus there are some very nice free shaders out there for it that make it very easy to produce photorealistc renders.

Aside from a few broken ERCs in a few figures and lack of dynamic hair and cloth DS is definitely becoming a contender.