I'm not clay, but I thoroughly recommend getting the patch. Everthing seems to work better, numbers of metaballs higher than about 30 would always crash my machine. Now the numbers seem to be a lot less limited...no crashes yet. And you get some pretty nice easter eggs like the one that gives you a list of some pretty good Bryce tree presets (Hold the alt key while clicking on the create treen icon... and hold down both till a pop-up menu...uh..pops-up.)

This is not my "second childhood". I'm not finished with the first one yet.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

"I'd like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather....not screaming in terror like the passengers on his bus." - Jack Handy