A friend and local E flyer has had a typhoon for over a year now. It's his main airplane and his first succesful flying plane. It has suffered some tremendous crashes and still flies like new! However, for learning 3D nothing compares to the Charger foamies ability to fly so dang slow and precise. The learning curve will be much faster with a foamy. A little over a year ago I went to a 3D event and saw the top flyers having a ball with their Charger CR1's and 2's. I had no clue what 3D was about till then. Now I can rolling circle the CR1 or 2 in my back yard where there's about 40 feet of room. The secret is in the extra wide body of the Charger's. They do not drop when laid on their side. Which makes it a very easy way to get the hang of the tricky 3D stuff. All the foamy practice has helped a bunch towards doing the same with my large gas planes.
It will take much longer to learn 3D with the Typhoon because it needs to carry much more speed through manouvers. But if you can afford it, a couple foamy kits and a Typhoon to apply what you have learned too, would be a good way to go.