To get myself to the initial stage of creating a Space Opera, I'm putting my own words into practice and using Blender for the first time ever. And I like it. It's actually way more advanced that most of the video editors I've tried using recently even though that's not its speciality. The interface is a bit awkward especially as my wireless mouse has a scroll feature for the 3rd button, but doesn't have a 3rd button itself. I could emulate the press and may look further into that. read more »
I've been using Blender on a Macbook over the last week. It was a bit of pain to start with but showed great potential.
There are some settings in the User Preferences that should help anyone with a laptop: read more »