WOW! For the heck of it I downloaded Blender 2.6. I have not seen Blender for some time and based all my assumptions on old information. The new interface is much nicer. It still does things in a bit of an odd way, but even after just an afternoon of messing around I think I could get use to it.

Even the internal renderer isn't that bad. It's better than Max's internal renderer. I tried Yafaray as well and so far so good. Don't know if this will be a "pro" option but I think I could crank out some paying jobs with it after a little learning.