Hi Bee - I bought XD, myself, and was totally baffled by the user interface. I was unable to intuit anything that resulted in even an image. Granted, I only tried twice - and then for only a half hour to maybe an hour. I have some tutorials by Bryan Smith (check his gallery - "smithgiant" - dude was a freakin' PIONEER!) and some "xep's" by Panny Brawley that she sent me, but haven't been able to find/make the time to go thru them. UF has a lot of capabilites and is fairly complex, but you can figure out a lot by intuition if you've ever used Fractint, Winfract or Flarium24. I never read more than a few of the hundreds of pages of the UF manual. The XD user interface is WAY different and it looks like it will take a good bit of time and effort for me to get familiar with it like Dirk, Joseph, Michael and others here are. It sure does give the opportunity for some awe inspiring images. I guess its like anything else worth trying - depends on HOW BAD YOU WANT IT, eh? Buy it if you think you will take the time to learn it - I'm sure you'd get help from the folks here but you'd need to want it bad enough to spend the time. I'm sure you'd get it figured out pretty well, but it WOULD take some doing...'course, I'm not exactly the "brightest gradient in the folder" and maybe others wouldn't have trouble. :>) Rick