Re: Flash 8
I've been using Flash from MX 2004+ for various project for a couple of year.
It has quite a few bugs and Macromedia has just been acquired by Adobe with their competing software so there may be some additional instability in the next year or so.
That being said, I think it's a decent product and plan to upgrade to Flash 8 soon.
There are tons of tutorials on the web for learning how to use it and for specific effects. You just have to be careful in selecting the one's that match your version of Flash else you'll be totally confused.
The MX/Dreamweaver package is a good value for me.
If you're in college, you can get a great discount on the student version.