For years, I wished there were good online courses on using software and web technology, but designed for non-techies. I have a mountain of user guidebooks, but lack the attention span to read through them, and I'll never find time to take a real course outside of my own livingroom. Who has time?

I recently went through an online training course on Lynda.com, a company that's actually been around for about twelve years. I went through a course in several sessions, which was easy to do because it was broken down into sections and subsections by topic. Several times, I went back to topics that I'd slept through the first time around (some things never change). Courses consist of audio recordings accompanied by a visual presentations. For the tutorial I took, images of various webpages came up as the instructior clicked through numerous sites illustrating his methods.

Pricing is not per course, but by monthly or annual subscription -- $25 per month, or $250 per year (or $375 for premium membership, which gives you access to movie clips and downloadable exercises). The course selection is fairly broad, and includes topics for beginners as well as tech professionals seeking to keep up with the latest technology. The library contains 19,534 video tutorials on 289 topics, all taught by experts in the particular field. So, for just $25 per month (or less if you sign up for the annual subscription), you can learn Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Office applications, JavaScript, blogging, web design, and anything else you can manage to fit into your busy schedule. I would think you'd have to spend thousands of dollars for comparable live courses.

In addition to online training, Lynda.com offers courses for purchase on training CD-ROMS, priced in the $49 to $149 range, as well as books.

My first question when I came upon Lynda.com was, "Who is Lynda?" I'm relieved to know now that Lynda is a real person (I'm always puzzled by businesses that use first names that don't belong to anyone related to the business). Lynda Weinman is the author of the first industry book on web design, Designing Web Graphics, and Lynda.com was founded by Lynda and her husband Bruce Heavin.