Can you check your progress before moving to next stage

It should be possible to resell Spore and install it on another computer, however, there are a few caveats.

EA dislikes resale of games because it hurts their revenue, and they try to discourage it as best they can.

For example, as Spore can only be installed 5 times in total, every time you installed it will be subtracted from that figure. The new owner will be able to install it only 4 times or less.

Additionally, other restrictions may be placed like no technical support, limited online capabilities and so on.

For more information, see this article on Ars Technica: EA skirts first-sale doctrine with limits on resale of Spore.

You cannot check the difficulty level once the game's been created, until the space stage where your spaceship health differs, depending on difficulty. You could however, make an educated guess - based on how hard you're finding it.

Next time, just try to remember it (writing it down may help...)