Thanks for the kind words, griff - and, yes, I'm a terrible salesman
.
Don't want to downplay the product at all here --- the $ for this software is easily the best money I've ever spent on a piece of software. I'd highly recommend it for the modeling phase of any project where polygon-based modeling is a must. And if you're just learning 3d, I cannot think of a better software to get you introduced.
Good luck.