New to Samsung Captivate

Hey there! I'm quite new to this Android OS and also about the phone itself. So what do I need to do first to make the joy out of it? I've been using this for a couple of days now but it seems to be that the battery is the part that annoys me, it drains so quickly! I've charged it for like 3 hrs for the first time and like 2 & 1/2 hrs for the second time but it only last for a day. So what do you think is the problem?

And also, I've read and watched some YouTube vids and I saw an app that's called LauncherPro. Is that a good alternative for Captivate? I've seen that it is smoother and less laggy than the stock launcher. So I need some advice and opinions about this phone. Thanks!

Battery life for most is about a day some peopel can get it to last for 2 days but that is with the phone running on bare min basically no widgets running, black backgorund (black with our screen = no battery use), min apps running

i use launcher pro, i would recommend using the free version first to see if you even like it at all, all that the paid version gives you is some nice widgets and able to resize widgets

Yep. I've tried the LauncerPro already yesterday night and I was pretty impressed with the performance. I also tried the AdvancedTaskKiller and the Barcode Scanner and they respond well. The only thing I'm having problem with is the HTC Sense widget, I can't seem to download it. I've read it on one of the topics here and the Barcode that I've scanned is not valid anymore. It says that invalid or something like that. And also about the installing apk or 3rd party apps, it seems that I can't. It says security about the android market because I'm on AT&T. I've tried researching it and it brought me to the topic about rooting or hacking. Is there an alternate one to remove that restriction?

Is that an application on the phone or on the pc?

Thanks. I've installed it already on my pc and I'll try to work it out when I got home. 

Are you talking about with regular extended use?  Like when on a call or surfing the internet?

If so, yeah that's normal for all phones as there is non fan/heatsink for the heat to be dissipated with like with computers.

If you're talking about it just sitting in your pocket, NO the phone shouldn't be heating up excessively.

probably the battery heat is coming through the screen, but if you use the phone for extended periods of time yes it will get hot because all phones do that but it shoulnt get so hot that its unbvearable to hold because also some of the heat off of your hands will go to the phone