restore point
 

Since I'm new to all this I keep screwing things up either trying to run some kind of update or a new installation. How I can a save my machine to go back if I screw something up with a new install?

Unless you backup or image your system there isn't any way to create a "restore point" like XP/ME has. If you have other places to save your backups/partition images then you could use something like Partimage (http://www.partimage.org/), System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/) or Timo's Rescue CD set (http://rescuecd.sourceforge.net/).

Good luck!