That's right, Blender has made a lot of strides in recent years. I was a Blender sceptic, having tried it many years ago. But recently I tried it again and had my socks blown off! I've since started using Blender exclusively for all my modeling/rendering needs (I don't do animation, so I can't vouch for it), whereas before I had to rely on several packages (e.g. Softimage for hard surface/ZBrush for organic) and never looked back.

If you only know Blender through its older versions, I highly recommend taking another look and even doing some tutorials - it's become an amazing piece of software!