I'm interested in buying a telescope myself. However, how easy are they to operate/find certain planets?
Depends on how seriously you approach it mate. If you are just after a bit of casual star-gazing then there are some very decent telescopes available these days for £150-200, and that hasn't always been the case. You can operate these 'by hand' so to speak, which involves finding the object you want to observe in the finderscope and then moving the telescope manually so the object stays in the field of view. Alternatively you can buy a telescope with a motor drive which enables it to follow objects automatically as they move across the night sky.
Once you get familiar with the night sky and various constellations you'll have no problems finding your way around, and if you live somewhere with little light pollution then that's a bonus. Same with the planets...Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be found fairly easily with the naked eye if you know where to look, I'd imagine there are plenty of places on the web these days that will tell you where to find them. Mercury and the outer planets are more difficult and to be honest if you haven't got a fairly large telescope then they aren't that interesting.
I reckon the telescope Bondred treated himself to would do you fine to begin with, just don't buy one of those cheapo Argos jobs because you'll only end up disappointed.