I feel your pain...  I have been using poser since Poser 5, but lately, not so much.  I think the big thing that turned me off in poser (besides having the most non-intuitive interface in history), was the old library structure and system.  It took forever to find anything.  Then Advanced Library for Poser came out and along with the remote procedure call python script, made it usable again by bypassing the Poser library.  But it still lacked an easy to use interfacew.  Now, before I started using Poser, I worked in a program called Ray Dream Studio.  It had a great interface and was extremely powerful for it's day, and especially at it's price.  Ray Dream eventually turned into Carrara studio, then eventually Daz Carrara 7 Pro.  Now, I can do just about everything I could do in Poser, in Carrara.  It was much easier to use, and it had functionality that Poser simply did not.Now I keep Poser 7 around for those just in case scenarios...

I was thinking of purchasing Poser 8 to see if it has improved at all, but after reading some of the posts regarding stability and other issues with it, I am giving it a second thought.  I really don't know if I can justify the expense on a new package that may or may not work correctly, when I have an application which I know DOES work correctly.

I think I will wait and see if it improves with the inevitable first patch.  Until then, I will just use Carrara and Poser 7.  I really thought Smith Micro would fix the numerous problems in Poser with Poser 8, btu it seems that once again, they have added new toys, without fixing the old ones which were broken.

Quote - The past few weeks I have really been wondering why they keep beating the dead horse called poser.  When I first came upon it, it was my introduction to 3D and I was quite excited, but that has really gone the complete other way now as I see how much of my life poser has wasted with slow render times, crashes, bugs, and the like. 

Does anyone really test this stuff before release?  It really does not seem like it.  When I can render in 1/16th the time (or even complete a render for that matter) in 3ds max using GI and Final gather there is really something wrong. True, Max is in another category of program, and is obviously engineered to another level, but the way I see it a more consumer based program should be lighter on resources than a pro level program.  Poser has eaten a lot of my life, and more often than not in an unproductive and frustrating way, why do they keep making this program, to torment us?

IDL- something I think all poser users have been chomping at the bit for- was this even tested?  For such a big feature it really seems almost an afterthought, they had to know that is what we were all waiting for.  On one hand I have had a couple of renders, though small, that I did using IDL that did look pretty good,  it seems not even worth using because of the artifacts and the memory leaks or whatever makes it tick, or should I say untick- I am not an expert in programming, but there is something very wrong with this aspect of firefly. 

The attraction for me and poser is the fairly priced readily available content, but when the program used to directly open and render that content is frankly junk it does not seem worth it anymore.  I have been learning Max, and it really seems like it would be faster with all of the poser bugs to just use max and fix all the materials, though that is a pain too, but I think a lesser one when you factor in the poser life waste.  I know Max and Poser are on completely different levels, but I guess thats my 10 cents.  I am kind of speechless that this was put out before further development and refinement.

So, I ordered an new quad core laptop with more memory, which should help some, but whatever poser is junky and I am realizing it more than ever now.

Will they fix things somewhat with a service release, probably, but this is a horrible initial program release.