Whilst MS FS has it's limitations - if you're anything like me, you'll learn quicker doing hands-on rather than falling asleep at night with the manual flopped on your chest! And the nice thing about any of those programs is that you can't break them! Just keep tinkering away, and learn new things as you go. Get stuck? Press pause, break out the manual, and proceed from there. Get as much "arm-chair" time as you can with any new system... it helped me bunches prior to actually meeting the beast in the air!