I can't help much with the problems you are having getting the Mac versions of things to install.  I have Poser 8 and Vue 8 installed on my Mac and had no problems with the installations, or any problems installing content (other than some of the Daz installers being so old that the code they were written in is no longer supported on the latest Mac OS).

As far as Poser slowing to a crawl on the Windows side, I think that part of your problem is the fact that it is being run in a virtual machine.  VMWare Fusion is good if you are using Windows for simple tasks like word processing, etc.  But if you are going to be doing very resource intensive tasks like 3D work or gaming, it is not so good.  The best option is to use bootcamp to partition the drive and dual boot Windows and OS X.  When using a VM, you are sharing the cpu, RAM, etc. between two OS's and neither is getting the full use of the machine.  If you did a true dual boot, Windows would then have full access to the hardware and your programs would run much better.  In a VM, the OS only has access to a limited amount of virtual resources...not the actual hardware.

I get that too at times.  I can usually get the view back by switching to full screen and then back to windowed mode.

The native content installer for the Mac does not put the proper installation path by default.  You need to change the destination to whatever folder you installed the Carrara application in.....on my system it is /Applications/DAZ 3D/Carrara 8.  If you don't install the native content to the same location as the app, it will not load in the browser, and the landscape wizard will not work.

I have an Intuos 3 6.5" x 11" and absolutely love it.  I had a Graphire 3 3" x 5" originally, and found that it was just too small, and the pen was not very comfortable to hold.  The soft grip pen of the Intuos is great.

I have installed and it is the full version of C7 Pro 7.2.  There are no features missing or disabled and it runs perfectly fine on an iMac with OS X 10.6.4 (runs better than C8 ever will I believe).  The disk only has the content installer for Windows though due to disk space issues, so that's a bummer.  If you already own C7 Standard, you can use the content installer from that since they are the same.  Even the content from C6 may work as I doubt that content has changed much since it was first made.  Digital Arts magazine has C7 Standard included with the Mac content installer.  You can register on there website, and go to the downloads section and get it from there as well.  The serial can be used to upgrade to C8 and there is a coupon code to get 25% off C8 if ordered before September.  Hope this helps.

Quote - Which website did you go to order the mag..?    The main 3D Artist website is asking for British pounds not US dollars..  how do I buy from them... ?  what did you do? 

I used a currency converter on my Mac to get an idea of what the cost would be.  When I ordered, I did the order in Pounds, and when I did the payment with PayPal, it converted it into US Dollars.

It took a few days for them to process the order since I ordered late on a Friday.  After it was processed on thefollowing Monday, I think it took a few days to arrive via e-mail.  I t seems like it took maybe a week form the time I ordered to when it arrived.

I ordered it from the UK website and had it shipped to Virginia.  Total cost was around $17.  It arrived just fine, in a large bubble wrap lined shipping envelope.

Glad you are home and that the surgery went well.  Hoping you have a full and speedy recovery.

I never really had the chance to get to know him, but always enjoyed his posts, and will miss seeing that purple hat pop up in the forums.  He will be missed.

The large file is most likely the Carrara Native Content.  It is a collection of various models, shaders and example scene files, and will need to be be installed if you want to use the New Scene Wizard to load presets when creating a new document.  Some of the scenes are fairly good, and some not so.  The models are pretty basic, but do serve as a starting point to see how different things can be modeled.

Looking at the Digital Arts site, it looks like the version they have with the magazine is the Standard version, which does do hair.  C7 standard does not include advanced features such as 3D paint, UV unfolding, and a lot of the multipass render options.  #D Artist Magazine issue 17 has C& Pro.

Carrara 7 Pro does have 3D paint.  In the Assembly room, in the top left under the menu bar is an icon that looks like a paint brush.  This enables the 3D Paint features.

That is one of my next things to play around with.  The clouds in the realistic sky are not very realistic.

Anyone else having problems trying to complete an order for this issue at the website?  I get through the whole thing and it says to enter my credit card info after the order review.  No problem, except that after the order review, the next page has no place to enter the information.  Kind of difficult to pay for it if they don't give you a place to enter the info.  I have tried several times  using Firefox, Safari and IE, and none of them work.

Any other website where this can be ordered?  And does anyone know if the Mac version is on the disc as well, or just the windows version?