Hi Josh, repeat after me "the frustrations are part of the fun"
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There are a couple of ways to "fake" smoothness.
Change the selected surfaces to "smooth" in the lower left corner.
Play with the crease angle in AC3D settings.
Subdivisions are not so bad as long as you don't go beyond 1 or 2 levels, when you subdivide 1 polygon, you have 4, if you subdivide again, you have 16. When I build 3D models, I will sometimes subdivide a level or 2 to see how it looks, and then unsubdivide to continue working. The last thing I do to finish a model is to commit subdivisions (even then, I save an unsubdivided version). I continue to do this even though I now have a pretty high powered machine. No reason to fight with polygons you don't have to.
Have fun
Art