I will agree with you in feeling a little ripped off. I had trouble in the beginning with RDS locking up and crashing allot. I ran Norton disk utilities several times and things stabilized for some reason. I bought RDS 5.1 for $299 and 4-Elements for $99. Then RDS 5.5 comes out which I paid $100with 4-E included. I felt I paid for 4-E twice. When I got my RDS 5.5 upgrade, Metacreations was pushing Carrara for another 1 or 2 hundred dollars. My rule is never buying version 1 of anything. Youre asking for trouble. I wasnt totally happy with the RDS upgrade ether. Some function was lost between versions. Then Metacreations dies and sells off everything. Cheese! I gave up on RDS's future and started to consider getting 3dStudio Max. Then I found this site with a RDS/Cararra forum and found that Eovia is selling Carrara Studio with 100-bug fixes, Amapi etc. for a RDS upgrade price of $149. Everyone was raving over Carrara so I bit for it and so far I'm not very happy with Carrara. I'm having transfer pains between the RDS GUI and Carrara's. I finding discrepancies in quality of some of the functions. I felt I bought RDS again in a new Mac package that is less than intuitive for this PC user. But as everyone says, for the price RDS is worth it. Too bad it's gone. Ive tried 3D Max, and it seemed like RDS with more bells and whistles. But the price! In Carrara, I fear I bought a lemon that will take more $upgrades to sweeten or disappear all together for another repackaging of old rope. I like RDS and for the price it's great! I think you should try using it a little longer. Buy Carrara if you cant afford a better program.