Yes, I was at the e-commerce plugin Meetup last year. Developers who had used WP-Ecomerce had pretty bad things to say about it. Newbies, like myself, definitely heard the warning. (People didn’t want to talk on camera though, so don’t bother watching video to hear those comments!) But it was great, I recommend watching it.
I saw that Cart66’s paid & free versions were updated recently, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cart66-lite/ and seem pretty full featured.
I know using PayPal is kind of pathetic, but I currently do at the moment. It’s so easy to set up (although not always so for users depending on how set up) and free AND although they aren’t perfect they do have tech support that answers.
I’ve heard good things about FatFreeCart.com (free shopping cart) and low-cost but not free (unless not for profit) e-Junkie.com. They are both shopping carts that work easily in your own site, and like PayPal, you just copy and paste the generated code into WordPress.org. If you pay $5/mth on e-Junkie.com you can sell a digital download (on their server). I’m about to try these, they seem good for beginners (I saw Chris Coyier, Mr. CSS, uses it & he’s smart!).
Write back with what you choose, thanks!