I was reading Scott Kelby's book "Photoshop CS2 for Digital Photographers." He recommends using the "Bicubic Sharper" rather than "Smoother" for poster size prints. Unfortunately I use PS7 and it's not an option for me.

It will all depend on who you talk to (or read).. Personally, I use 3rd party apps for this and like the results better than either photoshop method.. Geniune Fractals does a superb job!

I've been looking at 3rd party plugins for sharpening. I use PS7. I was looking at Focus Fixer and FocalBlade. Got any suggestions or recommendations?

Nik Sharpener Pro is excellent, but expensive. Works with Canon, HP, Epson and Lexmark printers. You should know how masking works also.

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You can also try Noise Ninja .. I've been using this for years and it is awesome.. just as good as Nik. It has a great side benefit for portrait work as it tends to remove many facial blemishes as part of the noise removal.. too much though and it can cause what I term "plastic face".. masking does help quite a bit!

Wow I'm taking notes!

try the demo then.. you'll be impressed.. I use it for any image that has some background noise.. smooths things right out and with masking and a careful touch, you don't get the plastic look that I just do not like..

I'm not sure if you still need the info, but the trick I learned was to resize the file with 110% at a time and just keep doing that until you get the size you want. I'm waiting to get my first prints back to see the results. Good luck!