my opinion on poser 8.

not so bad.
it renders faster.  i am a little lost and confused because of the new library. but i will get used to.

when i am in the material room it is slower then in poser pro and poser 7.
the IDL is intresting. i dont know if i have a slow computer but a simple box and sphere renders 1 minute and 5 seconds. i think this is pretty long for a render without shadows. but its new and i guess you will fix it.
i can see artifacts but it was said that you will fix it until SP1. i am happy for that.
there is tons of stuff that you get with poser 8. tons. so much that i am spending hours to test it all. tons of stuff.

one thing that i noticed. poser 8 crashed 2 times when i was in the material room. i dont know if i am the only one. but it crashed.