I've used Microsoft's Sql Server Reporting services, it's fine. I have only used for a small company, but it works just fine. It's deployment is different, being web based, but otherwise, it's fine.
As DBlank, mentioned, if Crystal is confusing, Reporting services will be just as confusing...I think that all reporting tools are going to be confusing to a new report writer, if they are as powerful as Crystal and Reporting services.
To me, and this is what I banged my head on, report writing is about getting every field that you need in the report, from a stored proc in 1 line. This might cause the line to be really long, but everything you need is there. None of the reporting tools will read the data again, except for a subreport, and this causes a performance issue, and in 99% of the cases is unnecessary as you could have gotten the info from the database the first time in the stored proc.
If you are not using stored procs, every reporting tool is going to be a pain, because you will want/need to do something that cannot be done by joining straight to the tables.
Whatever tool you use, I would suggest gathering your data from a stored proc and including as much information as you can that you NEED for your report. After that, the tool is just formatting the data, which is easy...most of the time.
HTH
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