The student/faculty ulimited version of Max is under $600. A one-year term is less that $200! When you consider just one book for one semester of college typically runs $75-$125, it's not at all a high price for a college student with a good "book money" budget on hand. My wife is faculty for University of Pheonix Online, which qualified her to buy 3DMax4, which was under $500 at the time. I have very little free time to work with it though, so after a full year with the program, I'm only jsut now finally beginning to grok the modelling tools. Then I just feed the models over to Bryce for Texturing and rendering. (It's frustrating to wait for the renders, but the work of creating and applying the materials and lighting is much fasting for me in Bryce since I'm already comfortable with it.) I've yet to use anything from Max in commissioned work. (At which point I'd technically have to buy the full version.) I also know of several pro 3dMax users that keep Bryce on hand as a "add-on" for Max. The Terrain editor in Bryce is EXTEMELY powerful and worth the price of the product to these guys. Personally, I've found that the even the inner workings of the DTE are significantly more user friendly that the Max toolset. (Just MHO though.) Have fun.