I started 3d with maya and for the first few months I was a maya fanatic. However I was using PLE and I hated the fact of that every animation and in viewport there was that watermark...arrrghh. I ended up downloading the trial for max and learning it. Oh How I hated it. Nothing made sence, everything was backwards and abnormal at first. Then Going through the tutorials for a bit I started to learn max. I used it for sometime until i got the chance to use maya non PLE...I was thrilled, no shit.... for the first 5 minutes of using maya that is. Then everything seemed wrong, simple tasks made difficult... maya lasted 2 days in my hands... then i switched back to max and never looked back. MAX RULES.
Thou when it comes down to it, its preference and opinion. Both can achieve the same results.