Poser is probably the easiest to learn, with the possible exception of DAZ Studio (DS) or Animation Master (AM), of any sortware that does figure animation.  You might find DS or AM easier to learn, but that really depends on how you think. But DS does not have dynamic cloth (DAZ has plans for adding this in the future), and AM has very little external application/content support.

As for the high end stuff like 3D Studio Max, Maya, C4D, etc, they make Poser look like a walk in the park. They are designed to provide professional studios with a wide range of tools to accomplish the task at hand, which naturally means they can do a lot more, and have a lot more under the hood than Poser does.  The extra functionality means that there is also a lot more to learn than with Poser.

The same is true for the "mid range" software like Carrara, TrueSpace, etc. They can do a lot, and have a steeper learning curve than Poser. Typically, they are not as difficult to learn as the high end software, but more difficult than Poser.

For producing great renders with "relative" ease, Carrara 5Pro (or Standard with Transposer - need P6 or earlier for transposer to work) or any of the Vue line up work very well, but you still need to use Poser to set everything up (Carrara 5 does have the ability to do a native import of Poser figures, which means you can pose, morph, and add clothing inside Carrara, but you lose the ability to have dynamic cloth with the native import). Poser is still the best way to start, then you can add more 3D "tools" later if you want to expand your 3D horizons.

As for the recalulation of the dynamic cloth every time you repose a figure, this is true of all the commercial 3D software, regardless of price - that I know of. Some of the big animation houses may have some propietary stuff that will do this "real time", or there may be some commercial software available that I'm not aware of, but, be prepared to spend a lot of cash for both the software and hardware to do this!!!!  For dynamic cloth and "realistic" human figures, Poser is the best value on the market right now (this all may change when DAZ adds dynamic cloth to DS, but then again, maybe not).

IMHO, stick with Poser for now, the pain and frustration will subside (may not ever go away completely, there is always something new to learn), and Poser will become more enjoyable the more you learn :o) 

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