Thanx for your advise guys. I'm going to get the CD. Since I'm not Bill Gates' nephew so I need to be really sure about the quality of the product before purchasing it. I was wondering if anyone has wrote any books about CS2? The only one I found was for Carrara1. Is it any good? Since there are many many 3D softs out there, I have decided to focus on only a few of them (2 or 3 ) and learn them inside out before "upgrading" to the heavy ones. I've decided to focus on Carrara (for rendering) and Amapi (for modeling). I've heard that a book on Amapi 7 will soon be published. Anyone has an idea about the exact date?