Well in defense of Poser and the Poser8 team, Poser 8 is significantly more stable and faster than Poser 7. I also have Daz studio advanced and honestly trying to work with figures or lights or ojbects or materials in that program is a joke.

So what other figure apps are out there? not many that I know of.

For indirect lighting rendering Vue is still way way faster than Poser, but Poser 8 is easily 100% faster (and far better looking) than what Daz has mushed together with their various "uber" environments.

This XML files issue in now way hampers the actual program but it IS annoying and if someone hadn't tossed the idea of a RAM disk or I hadn't thought of using an alternate disk for temp files, yes, I would be sticking with P7 at this point.

I am confident the P8 team will figure it out. Today? No. Tomorrow? Probably not. Couple months? I hope so and I think so.