Don't get yourself too psyched out about this. The major difference with Debian is that it is more a self build process as opposed to many of the popular distros like RedHat, FC and Mandrake. What I mean by this is that with the latter when you install them they give you a nice gui desktop straight off. This is fine for someone very new to this environment and is comparable to the M$ environment. The downside is they tend to be a bit slow because of all the clutter. Debian on the other hand merely installs the bare minimum to get to a command line and thereafter you are left to decide what you want.
I personally would recommend the new Sarge installer because it does a good job of handling the hardware side.
I recommend reading the
documentation fairly carefully although it won't make a lot of sense initially but you will remember a lot when you start working with it. I also found this very useful
guide on all sorts of things. Finally the sticky at the top of this section on what to do post installation.
Debian is a geat distro. It is fast (fastest I have used) and teaches you a lot about all sorts of things especially networking when you get into it.
Good luck and remember we are always here to "hold your hand" through the learning process.