As far as mac/windows benchmarks go I can't answer, I have an 800mhz mac and a 400mhz windows machine. I will say that running Terragen via windows emulation under Linux renders twice as fast as running it natively in Win98 on the same machine, the UltraHLE N64 emulator was also a few fps faster on Linux in emulation mode. Windows is a huge resource hog, so it's probably not the best OS to choose to pit Intel vs G4. As far as multiple programs, I have alot. I use electric image 3d toolkit for alot of modelling, but there are also alot of times where I really need a polygon based modeller, and Blender fills that role. I have amorphium but haven't used it a huge amount, it's great for organic stuff, and for beating up objects and making them look worn and torn. I use UV Mapper to do my texture mapping because neither Electric Image nor Blender exports texture data into a file format that plays nicely with others. I use a Nendo clone called Wings3d for alot of the realtime graphics I do for video games. I'm currently looking at Bryce and Vue d'Esprit for their outdoor abilites, The EI Universe upgrade for it's rendering ability (I'm already familiar with the program and it integrates with quicktime movies very nicely), and of course Poser 5. Not sure which one I'll go with although I'm really thinking it'll be EI. Vue won't load my OBJ files correctly. Bryce's big strongpoint is that it is much easier to get Poser to work with Bryce than it is EI. I like the interface to EI better than most 3d programs I've used though. I hated Cinema4d's interface and Bryce/Vue seem better suited to layout than modelling. EI does both fairly well. I don't find poser clunky at all. In fact if you go to the product forum and look at my picture posted there, all of those objects were assembled in Poser. The individual pieces were modelled in EI, Blender and Amorphium, but they were assembled entirely in Poser. I'm sure all 3d software is really just about getting used to it though. I was rather scared of Blenders interface before I learned how to use it, now I think it is brilliant.