I have to admit not having much experience with the alternatives (a little Wings, a little c4d, and stuff that don't count like Amorphium). That said, I find the overall interface and GUI very comfortable. My major plaint, in fact, is that some areas of Carrara (cut-and-paste in the texture room, MOST of the controls and hotkeys in the UV mapper, and of course everything about that inane stuck-on metaballs modeller) do not match up with the rest of the GUI. Oh, yeah, and those little trays look cool but take up screen space even when not deployed: and I know they can be undocked but it simply isn't as smooth as proper "floating" pallets. Similar pros and cons on the render engine -- lovely, fast renders with lots of control and options. And those options poorly documented and scattered across various menus and various depths of menu without any apparent rhyme or reason. So I'd really hope for organizing and documenting and streamlining -- trying to extend the dominent metaphors through a process, not changing gears half-way through setting up render options. I don't expect that, however. Programs have a habit of collecting their history around them like a shroud. So instead I'd settle for more tools in the vertex room. A bevel tool would be nice. So would a proper knife.