Personally, Yes. I find it a lot more customizable and I like to have as much control and as many options as I can. The tools are really quite straightforward to me. I also found it ran really smoothly. It probably helps that I'm familiar with older versions of Premiere.
As far as recommendations, I'd say they're both good. PowerDirector works very well, despite the dumbed down interface and limitations. For simple stuff, PowerDirector works fine and is probably all you'll need. If you're doing more complicated things, Premiere is far superior and will probably see more usefulness if you s…