...the Mac version of P5 comes out (guess they've had their hands full with the patch over at CL), I'm starting to think I may not take the plunge. For what I do, P4 seems adequate--maybe my $ are better spent on other stuff: accessories, other software apps like Vue. Anyone thinking the same thing?

I am and I'm on a PC. My reasons are basically related to the promise that P5 was going to be completely rewritten...the promise of a .cr2 guide and I'm thinking I'd be better off upgrading my Lightwave.

I've got the PC version on my puny little Win98 notebook with no serious problems (haven't installed the patch yet). But I'll be at the front of the line to get the Mac version when it's out - can't wait to use all its goodies on a real computer! So far, P5 is worth it JUST to be able to group all my morph dials, to nest library folders, and to have a professional material editor. I think I'll find displacement mapping very useful, but I haven't worked with it yet.

gryffnn: how can you justify 5 hour render times, let alone the longer times posted here? I can't live with that, I go nuts waiting 45 minutes for Lightwave and if I have to change something I'm bouncing off the walls g....ANOTHER 45 minutes!

anyhow...Rhino sure looks good too s

I'm a Macintosh afficionado, and I am not planning to upgrade to P5 if and when it comes out. While I'm very impressed with quite a bit of what P5 seems to be able to do, I have yet fully to explore the possibilities P4 has to offer and my machine is a bit too wimpy to run P5 adequately-- and I JUST upgraded. ;) What's more, I'm seeing all the bug reports. Until I know that the Mac version is free of those bugs (and free of bugs that bug fixes cause that no one ever fixes because their Mac bugs on a primarily PC-user based product) I'm not springing for it. It's cash I don't have, anyway. My next purchase will be Extreme Morph 3d, now I have OSX. Personally, I'm happy with my P4 (not even Pro Pack), and I'm really having fun with it now that I have a snazzier machine on which to run it. It's stable (Poser NEVER crashes; then, most things don't), it's good, it's as much as I need.

The problems/bugs that are going on on the PC side won't necessarily be there on the Mac version. Some PC users have had tremendous success. Obviously, some have had severe problems. Macs tend to be more homogenous - there's not as many configurations - so I'd imagine that it would be easier to beta test. P5 for Mac should be a complete rewrite for OS X compatability. We'll see. I'll get it after my current animation project is completed. I'm not changing anything major on my computer till then. I'm not so worried about the PC users problems.

Well... I'll believe it when I see it, that's all. :)

Render times are certainly an issue--I'm running what, two years ago, was a red-hot 466 Mhz G4. I figure a 1000x1000 image will take about two weeks to render in P5.

I've now got what you had then! Yeesh-- yeah, I'll stick with P4. P4 is good!

Actually, I haven't done any really ambitious renders yet, so that hasn't been an issue. And I'm not typical because I have Director, Photoshop, etc on my G3, and an old Mac Duo notebook that I usually have on, with a writing project, so I always have something to work on when one computer is tied up. And Bobasaur is probably right - you just know some of the grief folks are seeing is pure Windows! My Mac P4 never crashes either, whereas the PC regularly has the blue screen of death.

I've got P4 ProPak on WIN2K, never crashes, but nothing else crashes either, but I didn't put a sound card in this machine either, biggest PIA are sound card driver conflicts...

Mosca,

If it's any consolation, I'm running a 350 Mhz G4 with 512 mb of RAM. I keep reading the PC users' problems and noticing that many of them are running 256 megs. That means they're running woefully inadequate amount for a graphics machine.

There are some that have a reasonable amount though.

Sigh. I miss my Dual 1Ghz machine with 1 gig of RAM at my old office. I never had Poser on it but I bet it would have smoked - even without using the dual processors.

At first I wasn't so thrilled about the dual processors because I didn't have any software that was compatible, but when I found I could surf the net with one processor while rendering in the background on the other it made a world of difference. Rendering is a pain when you have nothing to do but watch it. If I could do other things while rendering Poser in the background, the time wouldn'd bother me near as much.