Oh, good. This is turning into another software argument.
EDIT: No, seriously, people; could we not have another one of these?
Well I can see XSI Essentials users jumping ship, but if you have the other versions, you are going to find Blender seriously lacking. You may find that Blender lacks in certain areas even compared to the Essentials version, XSI’s poly core can’t be beat, neither can its Mental Ray integration and that alone is worth my money, imo. I think the basis of a good 3D app should be its renderer, but Maya had a crappy renderer before they started shipping it with MR so that isn’t always necessarily true.
Autodesk has a long history of bad customer support (with regular users if you are a major studio they will offer to wash your backside and dry it for you). Softimage has always been known for their great customer support and developers were active in the community like Blender devs are. You could speak with them and get answers or request a feature and more often than not you would see it addressed in the next version. This is not always the case. I know now that they were working on ICE, but for a while there I thought they would never update their particle system, which was a hold over (with some updates and integration) from their Softimage|3d days. Alias wasn’t as proactive but they did listen to their customers, once they got gobbled up by Autodesk, we have been seeing release after release of stagnant updates with minor bug fixes and mostly cosmetic updates. Updates that you can tell should be more complete are being trickled out slowly feature by feature, release by release to force customers to upgrade to get those features. Alias did not do this, they used to push out far more complete updates and when a new feature was introduced it was game changing. Its not surprising considering the 3DSMax hasn’t had a significant update of its core since version 6 and that is a stretch because while version 6 was a nice update, version 4 layed all the ground work (when Discreet took over the actual development of the product). Every update to 3DSMax has basically been, buy a 3rd parties plugin and include with the software, charge the same money. There are serious issues with 3DSMax that need to be addressed but probably never will.This is an app that was written with win95/x in mind, there is probably a huge amount of legacy code at its core. The reason 3DSMax is so popular, even though its basically standing still is that its SDK was freely available to users at a time when other apps (including Softimage) used to charge quite a chunk of change to get an SDK, and the 3DSMax’s SDK is almost as close to opensource as you can get. They’ve opened up almost everything so developers can get in their and do what they have to.
My point is that Softimage is a great company and one of the first company to create a 3d app the way we know it (everything used to be modular back in the day. Look at Lightwave as an example). Without Softimage a lot of the greatest CG effects of all time wouldn’t have been possible, they have a long history of excellence regardless of who owns them at the time and while they no longer enjoy the position they were in back in the early to late 90’s they are still a great development house. My hope is that Autodesk doesn’t try to integrate all their 3d apps but that they drop one of them. Hopefully that would be 3dsmax as XSI has slowly been making in-roads in the game market, where max still enjoys the number one spot. I’m pretty sure that if Autodesk opens up more of XSI’s api, it could handily replace Max in every major game studio. Blur used to be a Max house (they developed Max’s internal raytracer as well as some of Max’s plugins and materials) but they have switched to XSI.
What I was trying to say is that when you say Blender has the best selection, you need to explain why it has the best selection tools. You cannot just claim something and nto back it up 
Anyways I think Blender selection stuff is good but I would argue with you that Modo actually has the best selection tools. Only thing Blender does better is selection painting via brush size. But to be able to paint select components you need to call another function so it is not fully implemented into selection system, it is rather a tool.
The fact that there’s boatloads of selection stuff should suffice, there’s the shift-G menu, the loop to region selection, the B-key selection stuff, the linked selections, expand/shrink selection area, ect…
Cyborg Dragon, those are all standard tool set nowadays.
Anyways I was not arguing about the original argument there really. Blender selection set is fine, however as long as you cannot modify them to your needs(shortcuts) it will be somewhat limited since because everyone has different needs. And hopefully this will be resolved by v 2.5
I think 2.5 will have customizable hotkeys, the developers say so themselves.
Not being able to drag select or drag deselect with the mouse by default is pretty big.
I really hope that 2.5 has this.
The Lasso select feature is nice I’ll be useing that a lot now, ( it beat press B for box select and then A to deselect , that stuff really slows me down a lot )
Drag select bounded to the mouse please! or make a toggle for it.
I like wings connect tool it helps you cut into that mesh fast.
Blender needs a polygon cut tool bad. ( not that knife that leaves edges and does not work with snapping)
List for Blender to make it real big:
A: Polygon Cut Tool that work with snapping and leaves your mesh as quads.
B: Proper Drag Select bounded to mouse by default.
Ton that’s my list I’ll be happy to help in any none code way. 
( still learning C++)
If you press B 2 times you get a sort of “paint” select mode, works better than a drag select I think
LMB=select
MMB=deselect
RMB=exit
And rolling the wheel will make your select brush bigger/smaller
and CTRL is lasso select
Just hold CTRL down>click/drag a lasso
While Blender is top of my list in terms of favourite 3D applications, I think it’s pretty sad that a small wave of XSI users are abandoning their package just from the recent merger. Yes, Autodesk is pretty much growing into a monopoly (they are avoiding admitting this though, and who would blame them?) but when they have moved in as new owners of other packages, they have generally made good decisions in terms of what gets upgraded. Maya and Max are still separate. Even MudBox hasn’t been mulched into one of the others. I think XSI users should wait and see what the next versions are like.
…oh - try Blender by all means, and TrueSpace now that the later version isn’t going to cost ya.
But let’s give Autodesk a fair run of the thing for now at least.
A: Polygon Cut Tool that work with snapping and leaves your mesh as quads.
There’s a key you can press while using the knife tool and it’ll snap to verticies when you go near them.
Or are you meaning snap to grid or midpoints, you can use the knife midpoint tool to snap to midpoints and verticies, according to the little text at the bottom holding the MMB should align it to the screen axis as well.
I work very fast with Blender. This is because of the gui and (for example) the very good selection method (this not means only the hotkeys).
I work 8-10 hours with Blender per day for 6-7 years.
I have make many good quality things with Blender.
So anybody can talk about Max, XSI, Maya or something, I know what I say.
I have used XSI - I love it, very good program, but Blender has better gui.
I have used Max - horrible, especially the gui.
I have tried Maya - simply bad gui.
Sorry for my bad english.
Do you use Blender for something serious?
yes, did the characters for a shareware game, and now a mascot for a big company. Wont disclose here, anyway. And could use it for loads of more things. Just having better bang for the buck with 2d lately…
(BTW: I know Max, XSI(own license) and Blender, and I like the three of them…)
and also btw… I really like Wings3d selection system. But will avoid comparisons.
nop ,i jumped into 3Dsmax ,i really really wanted to go back to blender but blenders interface and keyboard shortcut are really bad ,and the worst thing is that blender have the worst gizmos between the 4 leading 3d softwares :3DsMax(best gizmos) , XSI ,Maya ,Blender .and other thing is that blender really slows down on 5th level of subsurfing on some object ,while XSI or 3Dsmax doesnt lag that much ((pc :3GB mem ,Dualcore ,8600GT)).
other then that ,blender is the best ,free opensource ,gamengine ((stronger then Source engine by 10X)).i dont say blender is bad or something that way ,i was a blender user for 1.5 years and i started 3D with blender ,but right know after i have learned both 3Dsmax and XSI its hard for me to work with blender because i r used to gizmoes.
ExtrudeFace :did you forget RCtool + XSI’s Raycast selection ?it makes work really easy.
EDIT :where did blenders wish list go ??it can make blender buy autodesk 
I never use gizmos and I hate them.
I love Blender because it is possible to work without gizmos.
working without gizmos aint good for architectural and precise modelling,well at least for me.and what will they loose in making a better gizmo .i havent seen a single change in the gizmoes from blenders birth till now.
I never use the gizmos either, oftentimes they just get in the way if I forget to turn them off, though the release logs show Theeth added custom alignment options since 2.40.
Care to elaborate (so the devs know how to improve them if needed)?
I have never seen anyone complain about them before. There are alternative designs for the rotation manipulator/gizmo if your interested.
Indeed. The only time I find them useful is when doing character animation.
I dont undestand why…