How easy is Reaper to learn for an ITB newbie?

I simply cannot thank you all enough for your in depth replies; this is one HECK of a forum! I undersatnd the need to provide the details of the PC I'll be using; I'm going to consult with a fellow about that today, and I'll post the computer specs when I have them. What a magnificent group you are! Your new friend Terry

Oh and yes...my tentative computer specs: Dell Inspiron 518 Loaded with Vista, Im told to get that out and load in XP Pentium Dual Core E5200 (2MB L2, 2.5GHz,800FSB) 16X DVD +/- Drive 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz (2 DIMM) 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) w/ DataBurst Cache Enough to get me started including EZ Drummer??????

That Dell is on sale at Dell's site for $350.00

Bookmark these two sites, They are fabulous reference pages that I go back to many times as I'm still on learning curve after 20+ years of recording!

and on the other hand 

yikes 

I put reaper on my machine and spent over 8 hours on it trying to hook it up with my MOTU 24 io. After a whole day which I will never get back I uninstalled Reaper and went back to Cubase. Reapers interface makes no sense at all commming from Cubase. Once one can work out the interface and get it running it may be great, but how can you find out when its so difficult to get hooked up?