If you missed the images by Nicolae down in the Maya forums http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=43210n you should see them, amazing seeing renders like this coming out of Blender, Blender + VRay could really start giving the big guys a run for their money…
Nice images!
There was a post on another thread along the same lines. Basically saying you could do a lot with Blender + VRay, GIMP and BricsCAD instead Max + VRay, Photshop and AutoCAD.
Does anyone know if there is a ViewCube and steering wheel in Blender? 
I am VERY interested in this. I feel we have been almost forced into using Autodesk products over the last 10 years. Its amazing to see the results you can get with these kind of opensource/‘small-guy’ alternatives.
Anyone used Blender? How does it compare to Max?
Anyone used BricsCAD? How does it compare with AutoCAD?
and there is more, check all these features Features — Blender, basic video compositor and realtime engine (you can check some previews here http://mikepan.homeip.net/games), the comunity around is very friendly… it has still problems to handle large scenes and the integration of vray is not complete yet, but it is very promising…