Yeah, learning is such a PITA.
Especially when you've been working in a program like trueSpace for years and no other program seems to be able to compare to it. It's grueling. Lightwave is pretty cool and (I think) pretty easy to learn, but it's also expensive.
And, yes, that's amazing that you did that much without tS crashing. Especially if you're using tS7. I have a 2.50GHz dual-core, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit and a 1GB (independent memory) graphics card and tS7
still crashes on my desktop.
I don't even want to try it on my laptop. (it's a "budget" laptop)