Lotsa points here, lemme try and hit a few:
I have to put my support behind Laurie on this one. We're a medium sized municipality. Our CADD Admin had C3D installed on just 2 machines, and we've been able to get desc keys, styles, linetypes, templates, etc.. together. The rest of the design staff has been continuing their work on LDD, so no productivity loss there. Our only stumbling block is we had training 2 weeks ago, and still haven't completely rolled out C3D. I think aloft of the staff have forgotten much of the training.
As far as being deterred, feeling ripped off, I think if this format sticks around for a while, we'll get our moneys worth from the down time in the learning process. I like the idea of dynamic edits though, and am hoping for huge productivity improvements.
Pipes: I'm insulted as an Engineer that the folks at Autodesk act like slope and cover are the only design tools that matter. Until you can define min/max velocity, depth of flow, flow rate, the pipe routine stays at the bottom of my skill set. Its a fancy drafting tool, nothing more.
If I had to make a recommendation for a medium sized organization, I would send have 1 person trained, and get to work immediately on setting up styles.
Then have training brought to you, I think we paid $3k for 2 days for 12 people. While the training is going on, have C3D installed on the users machines.