Well I've had Silo for sometime now, received it as a gift for some work I did for a friend, and I've gottten the latest beta of 2.0. I must say originally I was disappointed at the length of time it's taken for them to beta test 2.0 but then again maybe this just shows how much they care for their software. Silo 2.0 has an impressive array of modelling tools that work pretty well and can be imported into any number of renderers including Carrara Pro 5. The new pelt mapping style UV mapping capabilities are very impressive, much like what Hex offers, without some of the headaches. 

The biggest plus, for me, of Carrara over Silo is the scaling issue whcih isn;t all that big a thing with a simple freebie. I rarely import Poser content for USE in Carrara, so that's not an issue I worry about and I'm not sure how this will be carried (if at all) into version 6 to be honest.

Since I do very little rendering in Carrara these days, with modelling/ rigging Poser content taking up so much of my time it would be difficult to justify the out lay of money for the upgrade (unless it is REALLY cheap). Of course if these issues are fixed and the UV mapping brought up to someting near the normal found in most other programs today, Carrara would be my first choice as I'm very comfortable with the interface.

I've been with this program since version 1 (actually started with RayDream back in the day!) and have always be a supporter, so I feel really sad to say such a thing but we have to be practical too. There are just so many good alternatives in the 3D market and the pricing is becoming less of an issue, that its just not sible to stick with a program that doesn;t do what you need or has so many bugs, just ro loyalty to aname.

mike