This may be old news. But it seems we are going to get 3d-Max 5 for next year. This was a preety fast upgrade from version 4.
Check it out
well this time last year 3dsmax4 was in beta so they are in a one year develop cycle. the animations next year should be pretty cool with the new stuff in 5. maybe they will send us the software as soon as we register so we can play with it more 
Ted Boardman says that Max 5 will be well worth it. It supposedly has a new “advanced lighting” feature which will drastically improve renders.
um, yeah. if i didn’t know any better i wouldn’t know this wasn’t real
When you get good at modeling you can make anything seem real in almost any software package. Max 4 and Max 5 have the same renderer still just come lighting fixes have been applied but from what I have heard that’s all that was really missing.
well, all i have to say is , MAX 5 is pretty 
It also requires 256 mb o’ RAM, with 1 gb recommended.
I think i read somewhere that we will be getting max 4.3 this year. sorry, we’ll have to wait another year for 5
PS i’m 99% sure of what i am saying. we could get max 5, but i dought it