so long as you work exclusively with straight lines

sketchup does some terrible things with curves and can't do a lot of things that it should be able to

It does what it says it does, sketch in 3d. Not good for serious modeling work.

Honestly it boils down to this:
If you can't learn Blender, you're not going to learn modeling.
If you cannot take the time to LEARN A ♥♥♥♥ UI, you will not ever learn to model. Ever. No program will magically make learning things easier, Maya won't magically motivate you to spend the time to learn ♥♥♥♥, 3dsmax won't deliver knowledge in a pill to your home. There is no way of getting around ♥♥♥♥ learning.

Well, i learned the basics from watching tutorials on youtube. lol

http://www.caligari.com/

This is what i use... i think it is friggen awesome.

Download and install this (get the 2.6 version, 3.1.1 is not retro-compatible) :
http://www.python.org/download/

Then download blender from one of these :
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/ (Last stable version, recommended)
http://www.blender.org/download/get-25-alpha/ (Alpha version of the next update, potentially unstable, new UI, lot's of new features, if you can get it to work, go for this one)

have touched this is a year or two and thought id give it ago again. done in 2.5A1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0ytM0ufBH8

Ok 1. Sketch Up is not a very good program for modeling advanced stuff so if you want to do basic 3d its fine but once you get past that it gets kinda boring

anyway if you still want python its the first one on this list http://www.python.org/download/

then save that file (the python file) on somewere you can find it so when blender asks you to find that file go there and click on it... and like so you are blending (be prepared for a 2-4 month learning period before you understand that control panel at the bottom

I strongly suggest the Noob To Pro Wikibook for learning blender



HOW DID YOU DO THAT!? (i'm still in the "my faces look like cubism" phase however I'm getting better slowly)

Dude, 3dsmax wont help anyone who doesnt want to learn a crazy UI. last time I tried to get into max I wanted to punch the screen.What do you know, they finally stopped making you pay for it.

yeh, but i have it from when you still had to pay for it, it is still nice though.