Quote - Thanks for the list... I did look at C4D Prime but it's costly when compared to Silo or Hexagon. The price I saw for Prime at the Maxon webstore was a $1000 bucks... I love Wings3D but it doesn't have the advanced features of Hexagon...

Sculptris is neat and free. Give it a look...

 

Sculptris is a freeform sculpting app.  I like it, but the output will be very dense and triangulated, unless you retopologize the mesh in another modelling app, which is far more advanced techniques for any beginner to attempt.

Hexagon and Silo are good modeling apps for beginners, but lack a lot of advanced control for intermediate to advanced modellers, who want to save time while getting good results.  So they would be good for someone starting out, except for the one thing they both have in common...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9nKqOZjPjk

Also, it was mentioned that Sketchup uses booleans.  I don't believe that's the case.  Sketchup is a 3D "sketching" application, as the name implies.  It uses line drawing tools, in 3 dimentions.  The output is crappy, but it's easy to learn, and build simple models.

Wings, as suggested, is a box modelling app only.  This makes it ideal to learn the basics and beyond, as you develop a clear and technically sound foundation and understanding of geometry creation.  Great starter app.  Truth be told, some of it's edge tools are more advanced than Hexagon's.  You have more technical options to build geomtry in Hex (splines), but Wings has some tools for edge control and poly manipulation that make Hex's workflow look laborious and lacking.

$1000 for Prime is a good deal.  Considering there's nothing that cheap in the entire Autodesk line, and Modo increased it's price to over $1000 after adding some particle tools or something silly.