Quote - How about which version of  Carrara  works best with Poser 7 ..  5 or 6 or 7..?

That's a (little) bit like asking which goes better with steak, the vanilla or the chocolate milkshake. :biggrin:

For importing, I like C7 the best, because it can import Poser content natively, without the need of a separate program or plugin. However, I'm told by people that use it that the separate import (TransPoser) does a better job.

I've never heard of anyone that accepts the imported shader settings from a Poser file, regardless of the Carrara version. Shader nodes in Poser are made for Poser's renderers, and they work differently from Carrara (you'll find that bump, highlight, and shininess especially need tweaking after you do the import).

The current release (7.1.1) has a few stability problems, most of which should be fixed soon. I know a lot of people who continue to use C6 because of this. Myself, I'd rather have all the latest features, so I'll always recommend getting the latest version. Also, if you can afford it, I'd get the Pro version over Standard or Express, because sooner or later you'll be wanting something mentioned in the manual or a tutorial, only to find that it's a "Pro only" feature.

Hope that's helpful.