Blender just updated and while it's interface can be daunting, it's free. Wings3d is also free and once you learn the shortcut keys pretty fast. Silo does have some sales periodically. Oddly enough you can actually get very good deals on Silo when it's on sale through Steam. I know some people don't like Steam but I've never found their software that invasive (once you change some settings). As far as updates, I'd have to say Blender updates the most frequently. Hexigon can be useful but it's update cycle is pretty infrequent. Zbrush is very nice though paid. truSpace still has a lot of fans though it's basically a program Microsoft purchased then killed over time so no updates there. I really wish they had released truSpace to the open source groups.

The dust settled, thinking "what a fine home, at least for now" not realizing that doom would soon be coming in the form of a vacuum cleaner.