For "casual use"? No, P5 is not worth it (unless you have the money to burn). Are you really going to use the Dynamic Hair when the Kozaburo stuff is much better (and free)? Will you realistically use the Dynamic Cloth? (Probably not.) Stick with P4 until you absolutely have to upgrade or if you're trying to do to super pictures (in which case, you should save your money and buy Lightwave). And how about this for a reason: CL seems to be dropping the price on the base software AND releasing service packs every few weeks. If you wait long enough, the price may drop to $300 AND include all the service packs on the CD. Or, you can pay $350 now, um, I mean, $339, and then patch it to the current version. And then patch it again next week for that current version. And then watch as the price falls to $310 for a Christmas sale.