Me, I've tried LightWave, I've tried MAX, I've tried Carrara, and my tool of choice is Ray Dream. MAX operates in much the same way, and is in fact better at booleans than RDS, but is painfully overpriced in my opinion (couldn't afford my own copy, by a long shot), and tends to lead to too much reliance on simple primitives (never could figure out how to draw a plane and extrude it) while Ray Dream allows for a comfortable balance between primitive-based modeling and direct vertex editing- and, if anything, is faster and easier than the other aforementioned programs in the latter department. I generally end up getting a few hundred more polys than I would in MAX or Lightwave, and Carrara's got a few more tools for organics, but it's a rare occasion when these concerns have overridden my essential preference- I think the last time was when I was attempting to do a whole person from scratch, and I ended up not getting too far, anyway. I suppose it's half familiarity, half price tag, really.