Here's another wishy-washy middle position: I like some of the new features of P5 a lot, haven't had the worst experiences of some other people (i.e., lots of crashes). But it is slow, the Materials room seems fantastically complicated and the manual gives no examples or tutorials to help you through it, and a few things (e.g., the calibration of the "real-world" measurements) are just wrong. But I continue to learn it, because I know bugs will be corrected, Renderosity whizzes will write us the tutorials, and the whole thing will run a lot faster the next time I upgrade my hardware. Meanwhile, my P4 remains installed, and I still use it most of the time for speed, without feeling like a big sucker; I choose the best of both worlds.

Of course, if the face room front-and-side photograph thing actually worked, I'd have cheerfully bought P5 for that alone. But in my heart I knew that was too good to be true, and don't hold it against CL. Besides, now that they've made the commitment and have a start on an engine for it, they may make it come true in time.

P.S. to Mark: the guy who wrote that speech for Agnew was William Safire, who has often regretted getting carried away by the alliteration. Bill Adams