I own both as well. Started with Carrara and still look in here to see how it's doing out of curiosity, but I don't use it much now. It's an excellent starter prog and can do a lot (now that many bugs have been addressed). But Max's bones, scripting language, and the hundreds of incredible plugins available for it make it superior by a pretty enormous margin (hence the cost). As everyone says though, Carrara's a great value for the low cost, esp. with helpers like Digital Carver's & others.