Honestly Hitech, it was me, not the software. I'm an engineer used to dealing with CAD, PV Elite, structural design software, and MatLab. The very first time I looked at the TE interface, my first reaction was "how could this interface possibly construct a gaming terrain." I'm used to dealing with dozens of tools in floating lists or along the margin of the design window, with multiple spaces you can jump to and from. The TE is very streamlined, clean, without much to see, really. I actually thought I was missing part of the download, like what I was seeing was a partial package. I didn't think it was going to work. But then again, I had zero experience with any terrain builder, period.
So I dove in to see what I could get accomplished. Once I figured out how to start a terrain and play around with it, though, it was really very easy. Way easier than AutoCad. It's to the point now that if I want to test a design idea like a valley or an approach to a town, or nail down a process to build repeatable features using L3DT Pro to jazz something up, I'll start a whole new terrain.
I now have so much I want to accomplish with the TE and Object Editor, that I have to actually block out time in my calendar for it. I'm hooked.
Edit: The two things that helped me the most in getting me off my butt from "this will never work" stage to "hey this actually works" stage were Kanth's videos on YouTube, and the info Waffle gave me on scaling the terrain during the initial set up.