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Hey namesake! >>cheap student software… To add my two cents, I can see validity in both sides of this issue. I have a son in college and I bought 3DS the hard way. My earlier comment to you about college still stands: "work butt off, get good grades, get good job, buy everything." However, A Humble Proposal… I think much goodwill and marketing wisdom would be accomplished AND much existing customer alienation would be avoided if Autodesk sold (or simply, gasp, gave away !!!) a "crippled" version of 3DS. Perhaps a limited 3DS that would render only to low resolution flics (or have a limited file size, or limited face count, or rendered slowly, or was missing some commands, or…) Anything to prohibit its use in a production environment. This way, all students could have access, learn, display their talent, and become great employees and loyal ADESK customers. The existing customer base would not have their livelyhood threatened by a flood of full-blown 3DS packages. 3DS would reign, Alias would die, and entropy would be reversed. <g> The cost of creating and testing a separate version would quickly be recovered in full package sales. (Ouch, Gary, no, stop!) Come to think of it, why limit this to students? (OK, everyone who got hooked on a bootleg, er, evaluation copy of 3DSr1 and then immediately went on to buy every version since, plus AniPro, etc, please raise your hand.) Could be the smartest thing Autodesk did since they hired the multimedia talent. JKJ