Nothing really new to add to everyone's comments above. I agree with everything. I guess I'll just share my experiences to add to the mix.

Myself, I went from Alias Sketch (3 months) to Ray Dream Studio (3 months) to Strata Studio Pro (8 months) to PixelPutty Animation System (1 year) to Animation Master (2 years) to Softimage 3D (1 year) to 3ds max (5 years and going) and finally now with Maya (less than a year). I've worked on Macs, PCs, and SGI workstations. Bottomline is all of the programs and all of the hardware do the same thing. It's all about the work that you create with the programs.

After working with all of those programs for the past decade, I have defined my own personal workflow that I can adapt to whatever program I need to use. It's all about the experience of discovering how you like to work, the kinds of tools you like to use, etc. You can watch videos, read reviews, and get people's opinions, but, in the end, you actually need to work through the programs yourself to determine whether or not they will work for what you need/want. This is something that will take time to do.

My suggestion is to just pick one program and run with it for a while. Put it through its paces to see what's good and what's bad. If it's Maya, great. If not, that's good too. Just use whatever works for you.