There are alternatives to Blender...but they're not free. The newer versions of Blender (to me) are getting closer to many of the commercial 3d modeling products out there. Hopefully, the scripts can get updated to the newer versions of Blender.
I just noticed this in Ben Supnik's development blog. While I haven't watched them myself, those who have an interest in scenery development for X-Plane may be interested.
Try View>Restore Frames and see if that fixes it. You may have to drag the bottom of the frame UP to expose it. I haven't had that problem in a while. Regarding the importing of a background image...can you be more specific?
Do the community, your country and generation a favor fellas...take this mess private. These childish, slap-fighting posts are a bore. Send each other text messages.