I already have a good knowledge about Maya, however in certain meshes I have problems with hard surfaces mainly, however in this tutorial of 3ds max has no problems at all in [this tutorial][1].
On the other hand this is my result in Maya, to soften meshes like this in the Maya of much work, so I spared details of the mesh:
Well, I’m downloading the 3Ds, I’m going to learn about it, if I like it and see that I do not need Maya anymore, I’ll only be with 3ds, if not both programs.
good luck. don’t forget that the 3D navigation is different in the two programs, so it will be a hard time to remember the controls simultaneously without being confused between every switch.
as far as our 3D artist suggests, Maya is better for animation, while 3DsMAX is usually more convenient for mesh building.
overall you should use the tool that you are more comfortable with, and care less about what’s better because there is no clear winner and everything is just based on opinions.
if you don’t plan to use maya for animations though, i would probably switch over to max.