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Hi Mike!
The multi-core support before Poser 8 was not optimal. With 4 cores, it assigned one quadrant to each core. If one quadrant was done, that core went idle and did not help out with the other quadrants.

Poser 8 does it differently. Each core is only given a bucket, not a quadrant. When it finishes, it starts the next un-rendered bucket. So you'll only drop to below 100% when there are less than 4 buckets left to work on.

Poser 8 will use up to 32 cores, far more than the previous limit of 4.

Thanks for the reply, Bill.

No, I knew about the Poser 7/Pro rendering deal, but I always wondered if there was a hack, a way around it.
Poser 8 being able to use all cores for the entire render is something I already knew about from other threads here, and probably the main reason I will be upgrading soon. At least it seems Smith Micro is on a better track with Poser than any of its previous owners... maybe my hopes for UberPoser will be realized one day. ;-)

As for the thumbnail size, I can live with it. It's no big deal to me, really. I could do without thumbs altogether since 75% of the stuff I load into Poser is my own stuff anyway, and I know what it is without seeing it. I could do with only text, actually, and I really like the idea that it has creation and modified dates available.

I'm pretty much just waiting for the glut of orders to subside a little before I order it. I wish they had a current server load graph on their site.