Octane? Advice?

Just gotta say, first, the forum search stinks to high heaven. When are we going to do something about that? I'm trying to find threads about Octane and the majority of the returns are people whining, ahem, I mean voicing their displeasure, about the preponderence of Iray only content. (if you can't take a joke, its best to just ignore my threads; the sarcasm can be heavy at times, and I occaisionly lack grace; but its never intended to be mean-spirited)

ANYWAY.

I don't know why I went and downloaded Octane last night, but I did. The demo is challenging. With the ridiculously large overlay and what I am only assume is disabling of features...I'm struggling to effectively evaluate. Didn't help that it crashed on me while I was trying to poke at the materials.

First question for any users out there: Lights... I couldn't tell if my lights were coming over or not, if that was just the demo or what that was about.  Am I limited to the environment lighting? And is the full plugin not quite so restrictive with the environment?

Second: any information on the materials that is a little less opaque than the official documentation?

Third: what good resources have you found?

I appreciate any input. This is a pretty big purchase...