I bought Poser Pro licenses for my 64bit machines just for the 64bit render engine.  I have not used the network render feature, because I don't want to deal with trying to get/keep a network functioning.  While I often use 4 machines to render out an animation, I copy the pz3 via flash drive, and simply assign blocks of frame numbers to each machine.  I would prefer that SM add the option to render frames in reverse order,  so that I can start TinkerBell rendering at frame 1, and Firebird rendering from frame 1200 backwards.  You would stop both machines when they reach the same frame.

The GI and multithread upgrades alone are worth the price of admission to me, for P8.

For Poser Pro 2 (name?), I hope they get the movie node fixed in the 64bit render engine, because I use movie nodes a lot, to apply animated lightning, or animate ripples in water.
If there is an equivalent GI and multithread upgrade for Poser Pro 2, that would sell me a couple of Pro license updates when it's released.
It would be less confusing to me if they used the same number as the concurrent Poser version, though, e.g., Poser Pro 8. :D

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5