I just wanted to say, to all who came to my aid and contributed priceless information, I thank your from the bottom of my heart. As far as I know, I thanked everyone personally, but if by chance I missed someone, I apologize and I thank you here for your generousity and your kindness to a neophyte. I think I'm going to go with Poser 5. It's pretty much unanimous with the Poser pros. I thank you for helping me. Be seein' you on the boards. ciao, Nikita.

Oo-la-la!!! Gosh, I can't believe this! This is like a dream - all of you giving me all this earnest information. You guys are the best. Shoshana was the one who suggested I post on the forum. I've never done something like this before; I'm shy even on the web. Go figure. My sister will be so proud of me: YOU POSTED ON THE WEB?! YOU!? Yeah, she's the computer geek, I'm just a geek. But now I'm going to be a Poser Geek. Ha! So, someone asked, what did I want to do with Poser? Good question. Basically everything it can do. It's a kick-off point into CG, which is something I have always wanted to get into. I want to try everything and then find niche, let things marinate, you know. CG classes in school are hard to sign up for, because upper-classmen and computer majors get first crack at the limited classroom space, so the classes are always booked, leaving simple geeks like me in the cold. If I'm going to want to learn, I'm going to have to teach myself. With you guys, of course. Best teachers in the world, I think. Coolest classroom, too - I can cut and go to the beach whenever I want. Ha! Can you really do literal animation with Poser? This is new to me! Now I'm really over the top interested. Can I make my own movie short in Poser 5? I'm still on the edge of that fence, just teetering, trying to absorb all you have sweetly taken the time to share with me. I've read and reread what you have told me of your experiences, and trust me no piece of info was too small. I am really moved. I did notice that there was a Poser 5 tutorial with a CD and a video on sale for sixty dollars or so. Has anyone bought it; did it help? Yeah, I've got like fifty million more questions. Kid sister forever, you know. ciao, Nikita xoxo

All right, you guys, way cool! I love this place. In answer to your query - I do have Home XP. So what you are saying is 1.8 ghz is fast enought and I should upgrade to a gig of RAM if I want to kick it on Poser 5? This has been a real eye-opener because I went into a chat the first week I joined and I asked the question Poser 4 or Poser 5?, and everyone said Poser 4. I went to Amazon.com which sells everything under the sun and read their customer critiques on Poser 5, and I don't think I read a single favourable review which was really dis-heartening, because I really wanted to get it. Even knowing absolutely nothing about Poser, it just sounded so cool, especially about the part where I could scan a friend's photo and create a model with their face; now that's worth the price of ticket alone. So I started to read more about it and I got this feeling that if you had a computer with less than 256 of RAM you were going to crash; anything less than a Pentium 4 or 2.0 ghz clock and you were going to be waiting an eternity for your renders to matierialize. You guys are the first positive remarks on Poser 5. Keep it coming. Additional question: I read that people complained that they had to go back and forth to too many scroll down windows, supposedly (I'm para-phrasing here) leaving them in the dark as to how the render was turning out until the final product was complete. Did that make sense? I got this feeling that one couldn't see everything they were doing until it was too late. Anyway, more, more, more responses! You guys are so cool to do this for me. Ciao, Nikita xoxo