Quote -
There are TONS of rendering/shader issues that 3ds max can do that Carrara can't.

Probably, but what difference do they make if you don't use them?  Operaguy is talkin about increasing render speed by importing a poser scene using bodystudio into max, setting up lights, and rendering.  He seems to want an option that will translate as close as possible the poser materials he already had made in poser.  Vue can do this well, and much easier than 3dsmax in my experience.  Carrara may not translate the materials as good as vue, but the importing of a poser scene seems more stable and reliable than the one offered by the max plugin.  just my experience using it.

Quote - Max9 ships with MentalRay, I find it hard to believe that MR would be seriously compared to the C5 render engine.

Again, for doing what operaguy suggested he wants to do, there wouldn't be much difference in render quality, and much less learning curve, so things move along faster.  If all we're talking about in terms of requirements is raytracing, then what's the advantage of Mental Ray over any other raytrace engine?  It's not like he's going to be taking advantage of MR's scripting or writing his own specialized object shaders.

Quote - We won't discuss modelling capabilities, or anything else.
I don't want to sound as if I'm cheerleading for Max; but I'd just hate to see somebody interested in taking up 3ds Max be put off of it by that sort of mis-information. It isn't one of the industry leaders for no reason.

I don't think anything I said is misinformation, but rather the facts as I have experienced them.  Max is one of the industry leaders for reasons operaguy doesn't seem to need right now.  He just wants to speed up his poser animations, and there's a lot of programs that can do it for him in one way or another.  I just don't think max will be the answer he's hoping it is.