Mildly recommended

If anyone wants to watch some training video movies of Windows and Macintosh applications, I would recommend looking at www.vtc.com and www.lynda.com

For a monthly subscription of about $25 or $30, you can watch an unlimited number of tutorial videos on Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Outlook 2003 (nice for those moving up from Outlook Express), Mac OS X Tiger, Garageband (surprisingly interesting to those of us who play guitar or have a MIDI keyboard), and dozens more topics. Always make sure you're watching the videos for the latest version or the version you own -- they sometimes only have training for the previous version of an application rather than the current version.

Both sites have free demos you can watch. The VTC site offers the first three chapters of any series without subscribing. Lynda.com also has free demo movies of each series.

Of course, many series are designed for absolute beginners, so don't expect to find deep content on the .NET or C# movies.

If you ever wanted to master Photoshop and like me you brute-forced your way when editing images, you can watch an instructor with design skills walk though any of the features. You can also learn Photoshop with the DVD-based training from TotalTraining by Deke McClelland. I went through all the DVDs and just by watching can now use Photoshop as a mechanic, though not as an artisan.

So if you enjoy watching demonstrations by enthusiasts of some application you'd like to learn, you might want to browse the table of contents for these sites. You can sign up for a month if you have some free time or want to immerse yourself in learning a new skill over a weekend.

And you can watch any of the demo movies to get just the info that interests you (you don't have to go thru a series sequentially). I enjoyed watching the 3-D drawing features in Illustrator CS2 at Lynda.com, for instance, and for a marvelous demonstration of artistry, check out any of the Bert Monroy Photorealism Part 1 and Part 2 movies.  ¶ 10:06 PM