Well, as for your fingers hurting, you can adjust the [U]Action[/U] (The height of the strings off of the neck of the guitar), lowering the strings, so you wont have to press as hard. Be careful when doing so; Adjusting it to much can make your strings buzz annoyingly. If your not to sure on how to do this, ask a more experienced player, or a Luthier, or a guitar repairsman. If you dont know how to do this, DONT ATTEMPT IT!!! You can adjust to far, and it may break the trus rod, which is a long metal bar in the neck of the guitar that controls it's angle.

A freind of mine had the same problem, and the pain almost turned him away from playing; then I had an idea. Tune every string down a semitone (a half step) and put a capo on the first fret. I had never tried it before, but he said it worked for him, and he played like that until he had hard enough calluses to play normally. I've never tried it myself, though maybe you should experiment with the idea.

Hope that helped.