A lot of people don't get on with Blender & give up quickly. Don't - it's good - honest guvnor! I gave up myself with the older version a few years ago, but the newer 2.4+ versions are much improved.
Selected links & tutorials that helped me immensely:
Blender for the faint-hearted @ Sci-Fi meshes
If you only look at one site, look at the Faint-hearted tutorials - they helped me the most!
2.43 Manual
Blender Hotkeys list
WikiBooks Noob to Pro series
BlenderArtists

Also there are quite a few video tutorials on YouTube that are quite useful. For example the

" target="new">array modifier.