I think Carrara is a great program and will always be in my tool box, the render engine I think is nice but not super compaired to Lightwave, 3D Studio, Cinema 4D .......

I used Strata several years ago and really like the versitility of the app but found to many limitations.

What I like about Carrara is the amount of tools you get for the price and ease of use, what I don't like is the room style interface I would perfer to have one main screen or maybe two (Model side and Animation side).

My work flow includes

Modo 301 for modeling, uv maps and texturing
Carrara for test renders sometime final renders and play time :)
Lightwave for final renders and animation.

Dwarg
I agree about the whole Blender thing, if it wasn't for the interface there would be no question.

I'm not sure where you are at when it comes to 3D but price per feature Carrara is an ok option easy to get into ot has lots of pre made content and a great manual.

However there are lots of options at that price point.
-Soft|image
-Cinema 4D 10.5 Base
-TrueSpace 7.x
-Hash Animation Master