I use Rhino 2.0 right now - it's not exactly ment for pure polygon editing though. It uses nurbs. It's cheap compared to most modelers, (I'm a student and picked up my copy with Flamingo for around 250.00 if I remember correctly), and can do amazing things. It's an amazing tool at making morphs for poser characters too - however if your looking for a solid polygon modeler, then it's probally not going to be your first choice. I hear version 3.0 will offer more along the lines of polygon editing though. By the way, the Rhino 3d community here is amazing ;) . They'll teach you anything in no time!