New at least to Poser on Windows. Not that Im knocking Windows, far from it, Im looking forward to running the application on the new machine. Which I lease from my accountant but anyway this is going to be an interesting first month. Two questions. I was of the impression where from I dont know that Poser 4 could render in the background like a printer or CD burner while we happily go about other tasks. Please tell me if Poser 4 on Windows XP Home is able to do this and how is it done. Not that my Mac is able to do it either and at 400 it is slower than the 2Gb AMD. The other question was the animation format. Sort of a survey really, I will be putting the animations onto PAL system vhs and I go to do the anim and theres half a dozen compresser formats to pick before I can start. What should I use? What do you use? Is Poser 5 any better?

Well, Poser 5 in Firefly renders is much more time and memory consuming than Poser 4 (from my experience) and it tends to work better if you don't do other things in the background (though I have and have been able to render)...I often do my production render before I go to bed and hope for the best when I get up in the morning. Poser 4 (for me, in Windows ME) renders happily while I do other things on my computer (and is beginning to look like a speed demon by comparison)...I wouldn't do too many memory consuming things, but normal use seems okay. I've not a clue about animation.

How do we animate in the bakground in Poser 4?

Animating in the background: Poser doesn't quite make it obvious, but you can do it. Just start the animation and then use the taskbar to switch over to another program. Don't hit the "cancel" on the Make Movie. (I've got an animation rendering right now!)