If you find the hotkeys confusing, and hard to remember (as I once did), then I HIGHLY recommend installing the Pie Menu, and Dynamic Spacebar Menu addons.  They take the place of virtually a dozen hotkeys, for switching modes, and screens, and displays, etc., and really take the burden away from memorization.  The Dynamic Spacebar puts everything in the Mesh and Create tabs and menus in one place, making it much easier to access those things.

These two plugins, which someone else had recommended to me, really made the difference in my getting along with Blender's UI.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.