The educational version of Maya Unlimited is about $800 at www.journeyed.com. (Maya Complete is about $600. The difference, as far as I know, is that Complete does not have hair, cloth and fluid dynamics.) Compared to the regular price of Unlimited, which is about $7,000, I think $800 is quite a discount. (For Complete, the regular price is about $2,000.) I think that the educational version is the same as the regular version, you're just not supposed to use it for commercial work. I agree, the watermark in PLE is quite big and distracting. I guess they didn't want people to make commercial renders with this demo version. At least this PLE does not expire, unlike some other demos...