fasterem

Just got this camera yesterday, and it is as i have read kinda confusing how to operate the thing, but I am trying really hard to figure it out, a couple of the things that are really important to figure out right now is 1 can someone explain to me how to get to the camera functions?? I am doing exactly as the directions say 1 turn main power on on the bottom of the camera, 2 wait for the backlight to turn off on the lower screen 3 hit the cam\pw button, and wait for the little red light to go off then hit the center buttong on the top contols, now I have done that a hundered and 6 times and only was able to get that option to open 2 times last night, now my question there is when the camera options are able to be accessed is the light between the botton that indicates "cam in use" supposed to be on or off???? I have tried it in all ways and like I said only two times have I accessed the menu on the on board veiwer.

the other question is I bought a memory card for this thing, stuck it in and had the camera take pictures and nothing is going on the card ;-( my question there is do you have to format it first on the camera? just putting it in isn't good enough? and again to format it you need to access the top screen and the menus from that screen ;-( and well we all know that I can't for some reason do that yet
all brand new batteries too and I double checked them all with a meter and all are were at over 1.60

thanks in advance, any advice would be helpful