Hey Reg, nice to see you paid heed to my Rickenbacker suggestion!
Lanny, for chord changes there's nothing you can do but practice. I know it's frustrating at first; I thought I would never be able to do it. What you might try doing is just strum half the chord formation (i.e. the fingerings on the G-B-E strings) and then gradually expand to the rest of the strings as you get more comfortable.
As for floating bridges, I have a Floyd Rose on my Ibanez EX370H which has never given me any problems whatsoever with tuning, buzzing, tone--any thing like that. When I can afford to buy a nicer guitar I might get one with a stationary bridge, but I wouldn't necessarily be averse to getting another Floyd Rose that I can make all sorts of crazy heavy metals sounds with.