We use Final Cut Pro. We started out with Premiere about 6-7 years ago, but it was fairly buggy at the time so we switched to Final Cut Pro. It's hard to judge the learning curve for you because I don't know if you have some experience with NLE's or zero experience. I would say that in general, most NLE's are going to have about the same learning curve though.

Bearing in mind the part of the original posting regarding ease of use, I think Travis is absolutely right. Every programme has its quirks and idiosyncrasies.

If there's any experience that will be a useful primer to NLE it's probably a word processor which will have introduced you to cut and paste. But it's almost certainly a moot point because how many people coming into NLE today last edited using linear editing and haven't used a word processor?

I started on an Amiga with a SuperGen genlock. There was once a program called Gold Disk Video Director on the Amiga. That became Pinnacle Studio 400 on the PC, so when I got my first PC I got it too. Later I used Pinnacle Studio DV through about version 8. For the past few years have been using Avid Liquid. Love the multicam editor. Love the color correction editors. Love how stable the program is. Still waiting to see what it's replacement will be like. I did pick up Studio 12 a few months ago when it was on sale and put it on a laptop for direct to disk capture. Files interchange with Liquid on my editing PC.

started with Adobe Premiere and move to FCP and never look back. I really enjoy work in a Mac environment, less worry about crash and virus.

I've switched from Ulead MediaStudioPro (MSP) to Thomson Grass Valley Edius 5.
Background: I've used MSP since I got it "free" with purchase of a 1394 card back in 1999. Ulead is now defunct, having been purchased by Corel. The last release of MSP wasn't real great with HDV footage. Proxy editing is nice and fast, but it takes time to render proxy files.

About six months ago, I started to seriously look for a new NLE for under $1000. Along the way, I've used trials of all the competing products for the PC. I even tried Avid Media Composer, although it was out of my price range.

The learning curve for all of them is really about the same. You just need to get used to the little tricks and nuances of each program. They all have strengths and weaknesses. Edius, for example, doesn't have the audio editing power of Vegas. I settled on Edius just for the speed. It is - without a doubt - the fastest of all the editors I've tried on my system (Q6600, 6GB, Win7 Ultimate 64 bit).