I don't have that much time so I will answer some of your questions now and then come back to your other ones if no one else gets back to you in the meantime.

I have holdem manager 2 (HEM2) however I am considering moving over to pokertracker 4. It may just be my laptop but recently I get a lot of lag with my graphics when the program is running. It can be really annoying (and costly) mid session.

Both of these are quite expensive though and I would suggest trying to get one through a deal online. I am not sure what the rules are for linking into other sites so I won't, but I am sure you can search online and find one.

There are videos on here that you should watch. I would recommend anything by Tom Coldwell for the games you are playing. He has a video on notetaking which you will be interested in.

As for stats on your HUD. Keep it simple until you actually play enough hands that other stats mean anything. Otherwise you are just filling your screen with unnecessary crap and likely to make decisions based on poor sample sizes. Instead have things like, VPIP, PFR, 3 bet stats and I always think PPA (preflop positional awareness) is good.

Concentrate on playing few tables and watching everything, In fact, for someone starting out I would say stay away from ZOOM and play a couple of normal tables.

As for marking players I have the following categories:
TAG
LAG
Maniac
Loose Passive
Loose/recreational (this is a category I often put obviously bad players into quickly until i can put them in a more specific category once I have seen them play for longer)
3 bet monkey
Multitabler
NIT

Then just assign colours for each one. In stars you can rename the colours to each category.

For someone with lots of categories check out one of Alien Slayer's videos, such as 'comparison between TAG and LAG'. When he right clicks to label a player you can see all his different labels come up. Pause the video and read through them.

thanks for you answers! you've basically answered all of my questions, especially thanks for suggesting which videos to watch. I will check them.

if anyone else has anything to say, please do, always nice to hear different opinions.

Other software: I use pokerstrategy.com EquilabOmaha. I find it really useful and easy to use and it is free! For some reason it is never mentioned though it seems everyone uses propokertools.com (also free). I use both. A good idea is to start learning the equities of hands especially on different flops. Use these programs and play arounbd with different hands and ranges. A beginning PLO player will often be shocked at how much or how little equity he actually has in many spots.

Everyone has their own note-taking system and what you are looking to do is give yourself the ability to make quick decisions which are superior given the information you have to your standard game plan (although that should obv be solid and the focus of most of your work).

For reference, I use a pretty simple method of colour-coding very basic types of villains:

Red - Crusher
Orange - Aggro (probs not awful)
Yellow - Loose/passive
Green - Fish
Blue - Tight/nit
Pink - WHALE!
(Light Blue) - Uncategorised information
(Purple) - Info away from table (known to watch my RIO videos, know IRL etc.)

On top of those, I take short (one line max) notes which are used to jog my memory of interesting/telling hands. Something like, "Call x2, X'ed back KhTh** on Qh94h73h (PLO)." That tells me a number of things (along with obviously giving me a truncated hand history):

1) Villain's river value range is SUPER narrow - we can therefore either NEVER pay him or bluff-catch him mercilessly depending on whether he seems like he'll bluff (note: for most people this means we are folding a crapton unless their line just doesn't make sense for river value).

2) He's not likely to have a particularly wide semi-bluffing range. KThh, assuming the side cards aren't dog dirt, is a pretty legitimate raise on that board in many situations.which obviously plays into the range(s) I'll assign him.

3) Overall, he's likely to have quite a passive game and therefore I can give his raises more credit than I would a random.