How complex of a board do you need to make? My very first PCB was done by hand - marker on bare copper clad board (didn't turn out too well obviously), and the next one I did was manually laid out on some generic CAD system. After that I gave up and had my boards built by fab houses - learned Orcad (university had lots of resources), followed by Protel (cheap, USD ~$3K license). I never learned PADS (not sure if they're still around), and I haven't tried Eagle (free starter version)(yet).
Do you have a project that you need to complete? Do you have some idea of the budget?
James