It’s not as easy as stata, since it is all about codes and command lines, to point and click.
It’s not hard to get going with it, you can probably do some basic regression and plots right away.
But messing around with data tables and stuff like that takes a little bit of time to get used to.

I’ve used it a little, but being that I learned SPSS and STATA first, I find them easier to use.

That said, both of those programs cost $$$$$, and I’m not sure I’l always have a job willing to spend for them. So I’ve been trying to teach myself R little by little.

Supposedly R’s graphical awesomeness buries SPSS and STATA ( which wouldn’t be hard). I know for a fact that it’s memory management is waaay better than SPSS.

I’ve used it a little bit as well, and it does have a learning curve. But it’s hard to beat the price.

But there are a lot of great learning resources and references on the web. I think it’s worth learning and messing around with.

I’m fine with a learning curve, and the price is hard to beat.

And just ‘cause I’m thanking these guys doesn’t mean more people can’t post, or that I won’t be grateful for additional comments!

I’ve used S-Plus in college for my statistics classes. Have you used/heard of S-Plus? R is basically the freeware version of S-Plus, and I was able to switch from S-Plus to R when the ‘student trial’ ended without much trouble.

What’s intimidating is that you start with just a command line. Also, the syntax from what I remember was a little funky. But if you’ve done any kind of very basic-level programming (C++, Java, even HTML) you could probably figure it out very quickly.

But yeah, as others have said, it’s all about the graphics. There are tons of ways of graphing and plotting, once you figure out how to input and mess with the data, usually as vectors and matrices. The graphs you can make are as good/better than from most software you actually have to buy and are hundreds of $.