Can anyone who has taken these courses comment on which they preferred. I have seen reviews but I find it difficult to judge without a comparison. What did you find easier/more interesting?

I think Bio 3ff3 is either a hit or a miss. My friends did poorly on the exam and yet they still 12-ed it, because they aced everything else (tutorials, quizzes). I was going to take this too, but i don't know.. i saw my roommate's lectures and didn't really like how it is organized. thought it was a bit risky to take.

3FF3 interested me more because the book was easy to read and therefore I found it a lot easier to understand the material. 3S03 was a bit harder to understand, in fact I still don't understand how some of those programs work or what they are used for. However, what I did learn from 3S03 really helped with research for my thesis as I had to do some bioinformatics on the gene/protein I was going to be working on.

Bio 3FF3 honestly should be easy for any bio student... Evolution is at the core of biology, so as far as I'm concerned I think it's an essential class (despite it not being a requirement). Dr. Stone is a great lecturer, and as jhan523 has said the book is easy to read (plus you get to take the textbook into the exam!)

In contrast, Bio 3S03 is not as intuitive for your average bio student. You'll be learning about the nitty gritty of alignment algorithms, DNA sequencing methods, databases for protein/DNA sequences, phylogeny construction etc. It's definitely a step outside most bio students comfort zones, but the tools you get from it are VERY USEFUL if you want to do research in molecular biology. I definitely felt lost in lecture, on a semi-regular basis, but luckily the 3 midterms are far easier than you'd expect from the lectures.

I will definitely keep those comments in mind, and interest wise I'm pretty set. But I need to ask, is either of them considerably easier to get a good grade or do both require equal effort?

Time consuming is often a deal breaker since I hate mass amounts of reading!

yeah, or require useless memorization....