Quote - A few years ago I tried Blender and hated it and went with Hexagon. Three weeks ago I thought I'd give 2.54 a try.... and I totally love it. 2.54 and now 2.55 are a lot easier to learn. Why learn an "old" version and then relearn the new version? I can heartily recomend  both the  free and paid for courses at blendercookie, they were enough to get me going and there are quite a few tutorials out there already for 2.5x.

Nearly exactly my story. Go Blender!!!!

GIMP 2.7.4, Inkscape 0.48, Genetica 3.6 Basic, FilterForge 3 Professional, Blender 2.61, SketchUp 8, PoserPro 2012, Vue 10 Infinite, World Machine 2.3, GeoControl 2