With regards to the menu selection I can update a little on the problem I found with my insallation:-

Once in the material room I can select any texture in the scene using the picker tool from the preview window without causing any problems, however if I use the drop down menu to select a material it will 'sometimes' crash. I had the crashing problem with the Lola texture set from Daz, I was able to select any other texture in the scene from the drop down menu except the Lola ones. But I could with the picker tool ?????

SM says as they were 3rd party textures they are probably to blame :) Maybe so but they run fine in Poser 7 and every other application I have so something needs tidying up in Poser 8 whether they like it or not.

Also I find that when in the Render window there's a lot of junk behind the render window where the screen hasn't refreshed. It's not a showstopper but it looks pretty awful :)

Finally I want to make it clear that I think Poser 8 is pretty terrific with some great improvements, I've been doing the 3D thing long enough to know that any application never meets perfection till after a service release or two :)