There's a lot of debate over blender vs 3dsmax/maya vs another one I forgot, maybe solidworks, let's just keep it and any related modeling-tool opinions out of this thread unless someone explicitly asks about tools
Milkshape is bad only because it has practically no use outside of modeling for BL. The upside is you can do certain animations with it u can't do in blender, even blender 2.49b. iirc it's some transitional fade in anims or something.