Join #cpm.sc on quakenet and you can get a lot of help. You should also be playing on iccup, not on battle.net.

expect to suck at SC for a very long time. =P

All the hotkeys are listed in game. For example "B" for Build and "P" for Pylon. You can't set them up. You just need to learn them. (Doesn't take too long)

After that get replays and learn build orders. Once you have a few that you can practise, then just play the computer practising your build order over and over again, until you can do it at the minimum time.

This won't make you pro, but you won't suck and you will enjoy the game more. Don't listen to vedic, you can get good at sc mighty fast, its just difficult to learn the subtleties, which will make you REALLY good.

Korea begs to differ.

if i started playing sc1 now, would that help me a lot moving into sc2?

i don't know how similar sc1 and sc2 are, what units and stuff they share. for example if there's a protoss unit called slordeg, will the same thing be in sc2 and have the same type of armour and be attackable by the same terran units etc.

i have no idea what i'm talking about.

Many things are alike, but they really are different games. Technical ability will translate over just fine, but you'll have to relearn a lot of the game.

the slordegs are awesome in sc2

rule one:

in quake you get 1337
in sc you get gosu

In life you get rejected by the opposite gender. Means to an end.

I found a useful article by Tasteless on the rudiments of keyboard usage in SC (particularly how to use hotkeys to macro effectively).

Vedic isn't lying though, the learning curve and skill ceiling is brutal and unrelenting.

Edit: You could google but here's a link to the article anyway.
http://starfeeder.gameriot.com/blogs/Tasteles...e-keyboard

what?