what is the best program to design things with i have photoshop fireworks and paintshop pro which is the best to use and the easiest to navigate around( Easy to find things)

Photoshop is the leading image editing software and is fairly easy to use, + there are tons of photoshop tutorials on the web which you can use to get up to speed with the program.

ok cheers =))

As a free alternative, you can always check out Gimp.

what is the best program to design things with i have photoshop fireworks and paintshop pro which is the best to use and the easiest to navigate around( Easy to find things)

Photoshop is best for web graphics.
Check out the G3's Beginners Guide to Photoshop. Great guide for beginners:
www.g3fusion.com

Well, by far PS CS3 is the best for any kind of edition, using it in a job or even as a hobby, it's the best tools whenever you need and let you custom it the way you want-need. With the addition of customs Brushes, Shapes, Actions, Fonts and other stuff related, your PS3 becomes more a paper where you can draw anything you want to.

:)

The main softwares that graphic designers use right now are all created by Adobe.
You can go to adobe.com and download several free trial outs of many programs for 30 days.
I would suggest Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign.
http://www.adobe.com/

And then just get a keygen.
Oh wait,
Thats probably gonna get me banned, just saying that :P
Ahh well

Inkspace (http://www.inkscape.org) - FOSS Vector program. Like Adobe Illustrator.

Paint.NET (www.getpaint.net/) - Free "Photoshop"

and you could use gimp (http://gimp.org) as mentioned before.

And do a google on open source image editors (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=open+source+image+editors)

im using photoshop cs3 and im a pro web designer. Its seriusly the best.

photoshop CS3 is the way to go for sure.
best thing to do is search in google for tutorials on "photoshop effects"
and u get heaps.
thats awesome for beginners.
BUT
if your like me and u have the full CS3 version and your mum is a graphics designer, then you might have a little advantage over others, but give it a go.
good luck,

Being a Graphic Designer for several years now i have alot of experience in a broad range of programs, for example:
For Image Editing, Photo Manip, Layer Masking and Distortion effects i would suggest Photoshop CS3
For Drawing, Color Editing, Sketches etc i would suggest Illustrator
For Page Design, Layouts etc i would suggest InDesign
For Movie Editing etc i would suggest Adobe Premiere
For 3D Artwork, Pixel Shading, Landscaping, Terrain Editing i would suggest Maya 3D or Cinema4D
For Flash, HTML Creation, Games etc i would suggest Adobe/Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Freehand

So yea those are your basics hehe

As a free alternative, you can always check out Gimp.

I have seen GIMP before and used it on my brief time with Linux, but for the mac it has to run in the X11 environment. Does this mean that it will run in slow emulation similar to the way that PowerPC apps run through Rosetta on intel macs?

i have an intel alu 24" imac and i have to say photoshop runs the best out of all my apps,i highly recomend cs2.

360, CS3 should run better because it's native. I use FCP instead of Adobe Premiere, but that's just me :P