Just a personal opinion, maybe a warning - don't go with easel.  Wait until you can get espirit at least.  My husband bought me easel during the last months of last year.  ALL of the tutorials are geared towards espirit or infinate.  Things you can do are pretty limited as well, to me, I felt like I had just purchased a $100.00 demo.  

Thankfully the store manager at Comp USA understood and agreed with my concerns and allowed me to actually exchange open software for another title.  I went with infinate and haven't been disappointed yet.

I am:  aka Velocity3d