I love Blender, but you can't get far with it if you don't know the keyboard shortcuts.  I'm among the group who have switched to using the pie menu system for now, because it just made getting around in the software easier, and I don't have to worry I will get lost if I press the wrong keyboard shortcut.  When I first started using Blender, I got "stuck" in the render window.  I couldn't figure out how to get back to the 3d view of my scene after doing my first test render.  Of course, it's just a simple hotkey, but I was trying to find it in the UI, and just got myself frustrated. I think it was actually luxxeon who I first saw using the pie menus, so I decided to use them too.  It switches some of the hotkeys on you, but overall, it's very easy now to get around from mode to mode, and all that stuff.  I won't recommend the pie menu if you already got comfortable with the hotkeys, but if you're struggling with them, they could help.

I think some of the things Andrew suggested are sorely needed, but there's a handful of Blender users who don't like him too.  Never knew that until I talked to a couple of them off the record.  They have curious reasons behind why they don't like him, but I won't get into that here.  I personally think he's done a lot to bring Blender into the light, and without him, we might only have a software that only certain few would like to use.