Entering world of Digital SLR photography - please help!

[bumpbumpbump]

35mm film photography was so straightforward, but I'm finally moving into the 21 century and going digital. I want to start off on the right foot but am feeling daunted by the technology.
Should I shoot in JPeg or RAW?
Do I need anything special for keeping my pics on the PC? Is the My Pictures bit of Windows XP where I should store my photos - or is there another piece of software I should be using just for storing them?
Any good tips on not getting in a muddle with the files on computer?
There are different choices for numbering the pics on the camera - is it best to use the option that goes from 1 - 9999 even if you change the card?
Eventually I'd like to edit photos with Photoshop type thing - anyone got tips on what programmes are good - is the cheaper basic version of Photoshop good?
Camera arriving soon, point me in the right direction!

picture uploading should be OK now.

The best piece of advice I can give is nothing to do with the camera - backup your data. If you buy a USB hard disk to store your data on get 2. Think about on line storage for backups. We have taken over 3000 pics since getting our digital SLR, hardly printed any of them but they are backed up daily from one location to another in case there are any problems with the storage disk. The best method of backup is something automatic so that you don't have to remember to do it. There are too many "help, PC died and all the photos of the kids are on the disk". Backup is very important. Sorry if that sounds patronising, It's not the intention

I cannot recommend highly enough "the digital photography book" (well, dur?) by scott kelby. proper tips for people, not nerds.

Yes, your pics do still get stored in My Pictures if that's where you direct it to put them. (The software will make a subfolder. You will probably choose whether it's by date taken, or if you want to give it a specific name.)

There is an application called 'Lightroom' which can read RAW files and will catalogue them for you so you can search by the name tags you give them as well as by folder. Lightroom also allows quite a lot of editing options - just not too much spot retouching. Google Lightroom presets to find what kind of effects you can get. Not saying get it, but it's cheaper than photoshop.

The thing with Raw shooting is that you will get more info in the image - it is effectively all the data straight from the camera sensor. You can make better pictures with it, but you need to do things like punch up the contrast and the sharpness to taste, otherwise a JPEG will actually look better!

HTH

Just realised I idn't say how I store my photos. I now don't bother with the software that came with the camera. The Canon software stores the photos by date, so I just connect the camera and open it up and drag the files. Every time I put them on the PC I create a new folder for the month, iykwim, and put all April 2008 pix in one folder. I then put them onto a cd, so I can get them printed. I have 2GB memory cards, so when one is full, I save the entire memory card onto a DVD. I want to get a usb hard drive and am now thinking about uploading them somewhere as well after reading this thread. Although the last time I tried that, it kept doing funny things with Vista, lol.

I do have every single photo printed, no matter how poop. When it's only 5p a print in Tesco for 150 or more and I get discount it's great. Someone bought me a photo printer for xmas. It's still sat in the box untouched.

I still prefer 35mm. I love the smell of film.

If only I had £1800, i'd be buying the Canon EOS 5d!

bumpbumpbump, digital photography is a lot like 35mm film photography. The results you'll get are far more determined by good technique (get in close, avoid using flash wherever possible except in bright sunlight, etc.) than your camera and definitely more than by how you choose to store your pictures.

But we all like an easy life so that being said, anyone that takes a lot of photographs and manages them by copying the files around by hand doesn't know what they're missing. Applications like "Aperture" (on the Mac) and Lightroom (on the PC) are fabulous because not only will they keep everything organised but they allow you to do non-destructive editing. You're only ever applying adjustments in layers on top of an image so you can always go back. You don't have to explicit create copies and backups, they do it all for you. Plus you can very easily apply the same adjustments to a whole batch of photographs. Yes you can do these things with Photoshop and the like, but nothing like as quickly. Revert to Photoshop only when you need to do selective retouching and other such manipulations.

RAW or JPeg? People use RAW to make them feel clever. In 99 cases out of 100 it won't make a difference to the quality of the end result and if you don't already know when that other 1 case is it won't matter anyway. One could upload pictures here all day long and nobody could tell you whether you've used raw or jpg. Raw takes up more space on your memory card, takes longer to write, takes longer to upload, takes longer to process, takes longer to backup and so on. Life is too short - take more pictures instead.