As for me, I tried, Blender, ( long time ago) Maya, (still using it for certain projects) ,XSI and It felt awkard, I guess once you are used to some software it is hard to change it later.
But many people in the industry are encouraging me to try blender again as a main reason why they say it is for modeling speed and overall flexibility.
Also there is second group of people that encourage me to try MODO - apparently this one has also have some modeling speed boost and nice automaticated scripts that help you model faster.
It would take two or three solid weeks of work to get used to some software and only then one could say opinion about a software and it experiences.
I will definetly try MODO in the near future just to see if it is acually better than 3ds max that people say.

Hope that helps!