as said above ... download demos and play with them. That way you can't kick yourself for spending $$$ and hate the program. Rhino's "demo" is fully functioning.. the only thing is 25 saves,afterwards it still continues to funciton, you just can't save your work Cinema 4D is fully functional demo... you can't save. Maya PLE is a fully functioning demo. No demo isn't the right word for it. It works without restrictions (I think some functions might be disabled), the only thing is when you render you get a watermark on your render.