"But the point is, all of this was done - very quickly and easily - with Carrara, and I no other software that I know of can do all of this together in one app (and this doesn't even scratch the surface of what Carrara can do, all by it's lonesome)."

Jon, all of what you mentioned there can be done in Blender, Maya, 3dsmax, to name a few.  The 3dsmax has a cloth engine built in which is a lot like Marvelous Designer in what it can do, which I found amazing.  I only played with the trial version, but wow.  If you take Poser content out of the equasion, then Blender can do all of it too.  Blender's hair can render just as realistic, if not moreso, because of more complex lighting and rending.  The Cycles hair is incredible, and looks like a photo when rendered, just as you mentioned in Carrara.  Of course, the Poser application is the only thing Carrara has that these others do not, but that's kinda my point.  I don't really care about Poser integration, and feel so much more effort could be invested into other features, where Carrara clearly fell behind over the years.