Easiest to compare a Savage to a TC Pro Hunter to see the difference. Smokeless is cheaper since you shoot only 44g of AA 5744 for example and the powder costs about $20/lb which is about the same as Pyrodex. 777 is now up to $27/lb. No cleaning between shots or after use. See this comparison. There are some disadvantages, that I had to learn.
1) use tight sabots, not easy loading sabots, they must be tight to get the back pressure for the powder to go off
2) use hot primers, Fed 209a or Winchester no 777 or Kleenbore
3) compress your load by putting your full weight into it, i.e. lean on the ram rod big time.

I like my Savage, I have used it all year for MLing and during CF season. It is one accurate rifle, see this for various bullets I have shot in my Savage:

http://www.the-gleasons.com/this_is_my_savage_10_ml_page.htm

There is a large, very knowledgable Savage community over a "Doug's Savage Board", here:

http://dougva.proboards34.com/index.cgi?board=Savage

hang out, listen to the chatter and banner. They helped me a lot with my Savage. There are guys there with 2 or 3 Savages and there are guys there that can shoot 1" groups at 100, 2" groups at 200 and 3" groups at 300, and shoot deer at 293 yards:

http://dougva.proboards34.com/index.cgi?board=Savage&action=display&thre ad=1197743825

I have never shot BP in mine, I still have my Knight and my TC Omega for that. I keep them as lenders and backup, took the scope of my Knight and put fiber optic sights on it for really rainy weather, although I have used my Savage in the rain and it works just fine. I have had 2 misfire, both my fault. My first 1 was opeing day at a turkey, and I was using a loose sabot with a Parker Ballistic Extereme. The Doug's Savage Forum told me what the problem was. I put an MMP12 on the PBE shot it and it was hitting great, so continued to use it. The 2nd misfire was when I killed a buck a couple fo weekends agoI reloaded and forgot to lean into the powder real hard, easy to forget if you just shot an 8 pt at 50 yards. Anyway the next day I was shooting at a doe and the primer went off and the rifle didn't, it shot the bullet, sabot and powder out, but the powder never ignited. Again my error. I think there will be more smokeless power ML, because now the laws in Va, NY, Penna say explicidly that smokeless is OK in rifles designed to shoot smokeless, before this year, it didn't say that explicidly. So folks will say
hey I can geta rifle that is very accurate and doesn't have all the negatives of cleaning after each use and they will "go for it". Don't get me wrong, I like FLs now that I know something about them and how to tinker with them and how they spark and how they delay and how double set triggers are the way to go with them. I like my Omega too, one accurate deadly rifle, a killing machine.

If ya wanna find out more about Savages read Randy Wakeman:

http://www.randywakeman.com/savage3.htm

and read of course "Doug's Savage Board" and the getting started with a Savage here:
http://dougva.proboards34.com/index.cgi?board=Savage&action=display&thre ad=1095595863

Chap Gleason