Newbie Newbie Newbie!

[Echo R]

So new I haven't even downloaded yet. I've got a number of questions including which version I should download but I suppose I should explain what I want to do first and then why I am leaning more towards classic.
I want to create a purely pretend country. For beginning purposes, a simple terrain with hills, lakes, ocean, rivers and basic trees and grass is fine. My eventual goal probably years from now is to have a 3d walk-through (maybe even somewhat interactive) world with individual plants in which I have created on a modeling program I have yet to learn (so much fun... I hope), buildings, roads and maybe even people if possible. I will probably be using Blender since it's free and I will be using the free version here (unless by some miracle I manage to figure out how the program works and I do a really great job and can make some money with it so I can spend $1000 on a program [cringe... cough, choke]).
First I am using a laptop.... it SAYS 4GB of RAM ha ha ha I think some programmer who wrote that is getting a good laugh everyday knowing it's really only 1GB since this PC runs slow and I have to keep all my files on an ext. HD or it won't run at all. I have a hard enough time keeping windows explorer open (I swear my old 518MB ram desktop from 6 years ago was faster then this)! Now it's true some days are better than others but very frustrating when it will freeze up trying to open Paint.
Next. I am fairly technical and catch on quick most of the time but I do need good tutorials and if you think adobe's tutorials were good than we have a problem because I didn't understand a thing they said. Too much unknown jargon without any simple explanations first.
I need at the least a glossary of terms preferably in dummie English because when someone says "a sector is a node of annotation regarding a existential point in space who's characteristics are none existent"... it's just gibberish. (that phrase was supposed to be funny so you can laugh if you want). I also need some very basic tutorials that get me familiar with the program. If anyone can point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful and maybe I'll bake you some cookies  .
Okay so I think the best way to go about making said 3d map is to create a flat topographical?? map using some program I don't know about and morphing it somehow into Terragen and suddenly I have a land mass??? ha ha ha too easy most likely. But I'm still hoping there is and someone can tell me where.
I also need said land mass to be approx. 250,000 square miles (roughly the size of Texas) but I have no idea how to get said map to that size.
I have gone through and read many of the posts so far in the forum but didn't see anything I really understood (except the beautiful pictures everyone has designed) but maybe I just need to download first to get what anyone is talking about.
so recap....
which program
glossary
very beginning basic dummie tutorial
program for a flat map that will convert to Terragen with some idea of how to size it

Thanks for reading about my stupidity and I hope you enjoyed my sarcasm

[Henry Blewer]

Welcome to the forum.
I am interested about your laptop computer. Something does not seem right about it. Most Windows OS use about 770MB for the operating system. That should leave you with 3.2 GB for programs. How much stuff is on the laptop's hard drive? Much of it could be offloaded onto the external hard drive I think. The last thing I would like to know is what OS and CPU you have in the system.

To start, I would download the free version of Terragen 2. It will do everything except the following; animation, image size over 800 x 600, more than 3 objects/object populations, and anti-aliasing above 3. See how it runs on you system. Terragen 0.9 is also a good option if T2 does not work out.

This tutorial is very good. It will get you through the basics of Terragen 2.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7733.0

[Echo R]

First the PC is about a year old. It's O/S is Vista (which I hate), Dual core 2.20ghz 64 bit. Unfortunately the rating is a 2.7 which is most likely why it won't run a lot of programs at once.
According to the device manager I have under the D: data drive, 140 GB of free space and the C:Acer drive 75.4 GB of space.
I often download movies that run around 700MB-1.3GB I can't download more than 3 or 4 of these files before I run out of disk space. When this happens I have to either burn them to a DVD or drop them onto the EXT HD otherwise windows explorer crashes; which is why I bought the 1 TB drive.
All my files are on the EXT HD except for a few that keep coming back and I keep deleting.... was like this BEFORE I got the HD. There are a number of pic folders that I can't seem to get rid of.... hundreds of pix. In fact today while I was poking around in the system I found two sets of copys of the same folders...it was like 1300 pix. 
I'm going to go ahead and DL T2 and see what happens I did DL the tut earlier which looks promising... once I've completed that one where do I go from there?
Thanks for the suggestion cuz I really wanted the T2..lol

[Henry Blewer]

I would look in the file sharing area here, in the forum. There are some very good scenes you can dissect. My files are quite simple; I don't rename the various elements (nodes) like some people do. I do rename Surface Layers. This makes following the 'flow' of the setup easier for me.

Your external HD may be behaving as a backup drive. If you delete files from the computers HD, it think that you want these files recovered. This can be turned off. It maybe through Windows Backup, or another app which came with the external unit.

[TheBlackHole]

I'd recommend getting some anti-malware software or an antivirus. It may be causing your computer to run slowly. If you want to use models, TG2 is best. For faster rendering, use TG0.9 instead.

[Echo R]

My EXT HD won't backup any files... I've tried and the windows backup won't either. I wanted to backup everything on the EXT HD but for some reason I can't get the feature to work.
I have antimalware, spyware and antivirus protection. I run regular scans and rarely actually get anything. I am careful about what I peruse on the internet.
I downloaded T2 and it runs fine a bit slow on rendering and something happened with the final render of the tut but I'm pretty sure I know what it is... will try again later.