I was one of the fools who bought Carrara. I was excited about it because Metacreations put out great solutions like Poser and Bryce. Those packages were pretty good so out of expectation I thought that I was getting a good product. But like most, I was wrong and there was a since of betrayal, after kicking myself for NOT looking at industry standard I decided to turn to the industry standard and bought Lightwave(6). It is less expected that a company like Newtek, Autodesk etc... are going anywhere as they have a very solid footing in the industry be it gaming and or movies and engineering. If you want the bang you have to put out the bucks. I mean you rarely hear Lightwave or 3DS max user complaining about patches and software unrealiablity.