Well you know, you have a point there, lux.

Thing is, I tend to get paranoid when funds run low, and my first inclination is to jump ship.  I was kind of outraged for a long time now at the fact that there really isn't any alternative upgrade routes offered by Autodesk for their great line of products.  Like the various versions of the software offered by other companies, like Maxon's Cinema.  You can buy the Prime, or one of the more expensive versions, which can exceed the cost of Max or Maya, but at least they give you solutions that are more affordable.

Blender looked viable as an alternative to Max, because with Andrew's UI proposal, it's layout and workflow would be much more similar to what I'm used to.  I would be missing some crucial features though, which are important to me.  Not to say Blender wouldn't eventually add them to their open source, but who knows how long I'd have to wait, and suppliment the work in the meanwhile.  I'm better off using what I have for now, although I will still learn to use Blender eventually, as a back up.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.