Another post to say welcome to our little corner of the internet - hope you like your GP32 when it arrives
SMCs in the UK are sold at ~£17 from eBuyer, iirc, including VAT... £14.99 excluding both VAT and delivery... Not sure what that converts to in CND or USD...
Things you ought to know? Well, have a quick skim read of the faq, and it might be an idea to try practising some GPCinema encoding before you get it, simply to get a feel for virtualdub so its not as confusing when you get the actual thing. 2-Pass encoding is well worth it, btw
Other than that, only thing to remember is that GeePee32 does not run at full speed, so if ever you make a decision based on that, its probably the wrong one... its good for seeing things, but it runs them at ~ 1/3 of how fast they usually play.
Oh, and get yourself some rechargeables and a speed-charger. If you use your GP as much as the rest of us do when we first got it (let alone now lol), it'll save you a *lot* of money.