[fryke]

Lt. ... "In Windows, a typical path could be, say Desktop/My Computer/C:/Documents and Settings/Fred/My Photos - The mac would be: fred/Macintosh HD/Users/Fred/Photos
the desktop is not the highest place any more. the 'root' is the highest place, usually, the name of the computer, usually the name of the person who owns it. to find the desktop in a finder window, you'll find it under fred/Macintosh HD/Users/Fred/Desktop."

That's just sooooooooo wrong! Do you mean "fred" as the machine's name or the username? Either way, the machine name is not really part of the path on a UNIX system. So the Desktop would be at /Users/fred/Desktop ("fred" being the short username). But for Windows, it's also different. It'd be \\C:\Documents and Settings\fred\Desktop ... But I don't think that that's much of a problem. People figure these things out some way or another.

I generally agree that a good book can help, but I'd really just try and keep trying. Specific questions will get specific answers here.