I'm also one of those who was considering a higher end solution for my Poser stuff.  I was looking at 3dsmax and Cinema 4D more than any others.  Cinema for it's supposedly great Poser plugin, and 3dsmax simply because everything I see done with it over on CGTalk is astonishing.  I don't know if it's the app itself, or just the people using it that are so good, but I'd say 90% of all the best organic and inorganic works over there that I looked at were done with 3dsmax for some reason.  I never even considered XSI before because of it's price, and I was skeptical even about Cinema, only because of the lack of really great human renders I see from it.  But this deal has my heart beating faster.  This is more within my doing!  I'm not doing animation, but just for the power it has over what I'm using now, it might be worth it.

I realize now Carrara is also much more reasonably priced and still loaded with power.  I forgot about that one.