If you're just messing around with Poser 3 and not seriously into it as an artist yet, you may want to wait till Poser 5 comes out. I don't know if you will be able to upgrade Poser 3 to it but you might be able to. The thing to bare in mind with Poser 5 though is we don't know when it's coming out! It could be a year or it could be 6 months. If you don't have alot of money to spend you might want to wait. If you upgrade to 4 and then 5 comes out a month later you might wish you had waited. Look here in the Forum and watch to see when Poser 5 will be released. Now saying all that you still may want to get Poser 4 anyway. I believe if you got a free version of Poser 3 with a magazine the cost to upgrade to Poser 4 is about half of what it costs to buy Poser 4 on it's own. So that's a bargain no matter how you look at it. I guess my best advice is play around with Poser 3 for awhile and see how much you like it. When you start to say to yourself "Gee I wish I could render an image like XXXX's but I can't get mine to look like that no matter what I do.", you'll get the bug to upgrade and you'll know the time is right. My final thought is if you have the money and you can get the upgrade to Poser 4 for $100 ( not sure about the cost) do it. Even if Poser 5 comes out in a month ( it won't ) you'll be much happier with Poser 4 and more than likely when Poser 5 comes out the upgrade for that will not be very costly, at least that's what we all are hoping.