Loads of serious alternatives. But a nice soft-medium flexing camber board ticks pretty much all the boxes (aside float) youd need to get your head around everything. Its stable, poppy, and not so stiff that youd be struggling to get a press from it. And if you find you want to hit up rails with it you could just get a shop kid to detune it for you (or do it yourself) to give it a more loose feel. 

If you want one of the sierra boards, (which are dirt cheap), then maybe the sierra team ticks the same boxes. 

For beginners theyre great. Nice and playful, you wont be going too fast anyways and youll be just getting your head around turning. Not a single negative to mention. You wont be knackered, youll get away with murder, and youll have a great time on the slopes. 

For progressing beginners starting to carve, playing in the park or venturing to the blue(US)/red(japan) runs the picture becomes a little more murky.  For park its a great start off. Again, lots of pros, few if any real negatives. At speed and in steeper terrain though the negatives will start to build up. 

The first issue youre going to have is your edge may start to slide underneath you - this is called washing. Its just really a case of balance and freeing up yoru body a bit. Once you learn to relax and adjust quickly to conditions or balance issues youll be fine.  But it is something that requires a bit of snow-miles to adjust to.

Its really one of the tw central isses with a reverse camber soft ride: as you get better you pick up speed, and as you pick up speed you put more pressure on your edges. And as you put me pressure on your edges the lack of contact points and shorter effective edge become more pronounced in your riding. That is; you realise you dont have quite the edge control you might want or need be going at those speeds so the board loses its edge and you slide out. 

The positive in all this is that you dont catch your edges quite so easily though :) 

And heres where the softness helps a little bit too... it really inhibits the speed youre going to ride before it fees squirly which means youll pull back on riding too hard an edge. Its a complicated world this abstract theorising (which is what this is). 

The second thing to watch out for is riding over bumps. This is great in powder where you get that surfy feel we all craze, but in choppier/cruddier conditions (bumpy and hard pack) you get this feelingof being bounced around. That is, because the board is reverse camber, instead of smashing through this stuff like a nice damp camber stick might, the board is forced over it. The thing that makes this problematic is that youre line isnt straightforward, but instead youre finding yourself losing your edge hold at the time you really need it, which itself helps causes the washing problem above. Its like a perfect storm. :) 

So to summarise (since you asked about progression):

Pros:

Super forgiving.

Great for trying new tricks and looking uber steezy without any technique ;) 

Superb for those first 5-10 days on the slopes.

Awesome for surfing pow. 

Great for beginning/low speed carving since its pretty catch free. 

In a choice between washing or scorpioning, id rather wash every time. :) 

Easy mode "pop" 

Soft and reverse camber = an inbuilt seed limit. 

Cons:

Poor edge hold which will affect you when you need to go a bit faster (in the steeps)

Can get bounced about by the terrain a bit. 

So thats about the sum of the parts. Sorry, i know all i ever seem to do is give people an essay on what they can expect from x-type of board rather than telling you about specific board-A, but honestly i havent ridden specific board A so id be reluctant to lie to you. :) Truth is though, i find that so long as its a good company with a good warranty and few known performance issues, and so long as you pick an appropriate size and style of board, everything else is pretty much fine tuning.  Hope that helps give you an idea though of the GENERAL way youll find progression on it. First ten or so days, best thing since sliced bread, its only really once you start exploring the more difficult lines and start picking up decent speed the negatives might become apparent. Even then youll adjust. And if you dont, it can always be used as a jib board or something to pull out on a hangover day when you just want to butter about a bit instead of charge the mountain. 

Its always got a place even if you outgrow it as a kill everything deck. So thats certainly one more thing to add to the checklist. :)