Learning Mandarin - Some Questions

[mr tin]

Hello everyone, Just registered as I found some of the topics on here interesting. I've actually started learning Mandarin about 3 weeks ago and I try to do approximately 40-50 minutes every day (currently using the Pimsleur audio guide). I also have the Colloquial chinese book + audio for beginners but I feel that this book is jumping straight into complex conversations so haven't been able to use it so well. Any recommendations of a better book that preferably also includes audio to hear the tones? My main concern is learning how to write chinese. I'm getting used to the pinyin pronounciations, including the tones representations but the simplified chinese characters seem so hard to learn and would also involve calligraphy mastery. I am also interested in finding a book that deals with such aspects of the chinese writing. I would appreciate some recommendations. Also, what way of inputting the characters do you use? I also seem to get a lot of ??? when viewing pages written with the simplified chinese characters. I currently have Windows Vista on my computer; is there an extension or something I'm missing?