I actually like Max pretty well, having used Maya and Lightwave...my biggest gripe with Max is that they won't get rid of broken features...there are 6 ways to do something...and only one of those works really well. Maya is great and really powerful, I use it professionally. Lightwave is amazing once you get over the learning curve, and you can't beat it's price. I guess it all comes down to not what package, but what you can do with your package of choice.