I'll start off by saying that if you had the $8000 to blow on Maya, you wouldn't be asking this question because you'd be a professional who already has years of training Maya so you'd know just what you're getting
Quite simply, if you have to ask, you shouldn't be looking at it.
I'm a 3D art & animation major, I use Maya religiously. Its a glorious piece of software, I am fortunate enough to be able to use the schools copies for my own work, but you definitely get what you pay for. It isn't a $8000 piece of software for no good reason, you know
For strictly polygonal modeling, my professor informed me of a package called "Silo", which is well... simply a polygonal modeler and nothing more- however he considers the polygonal modeling capabilities stronger than those of Maya, and the best part is, its only $149
Maya itself is a very in-depth piece of software, if you are strictly looking for a 3D Modeler, Maya is not your solution. Maya's animation tools are one of the largest attractions in the package, however you need to know how to properly animate before you can take full advantage over them (ie. a common mis-perception is directly modifying the joints when animating an object, this is incorrect. You should create controllers, usually NURBS and assign them to the joints and use them to animate the object). Animation editors such as the Graph Editor and DOPE Sheet are a couple other features that make Maya's animation capabilities shine.
Maya also comes with the mental ray rendering software (a large chunk of what youre paying for, in fact) which opens up literally hundreds of options to make your renders exactly how you want them.
Maya is a professional software package, and takes someone with years of experience and professional training to take full advantage of. I wont begin to call myself a pro at Maya, I'm good, but there are plenty of people who know all of the inside outs of the vast package that is Maya. Long story short, you get what you pay for, but my guess is, youre not looking to pay to begin with, so what does it matter? Maya does offer a PLE (personal learning edition) for the use of learning the software, but it doesnt really offer much for saving options making it literally useless for anything practical (you cant even open PLE files with the full version of Maya).
If you have any specific questions, lemme know. Also, F1 (help) is your best friend in Maya, the documents are incredibly extensive and will help you understand anything you need to know about the software.
-John
