[Proteus]

If you get a bass, learning even just a couple of scales and playing them up and down on different parts of the fretboard is great practice just for coordinating your hands together. You'll find that there's a lot more skill than you would think involved in the picking hand, like pretty much they're even as far as how hard it is to get up to speed with them. Then just whore some songs you like and you're rolling. Playing the scales to a metronome is good for timing, because your natural clock is definitely off when you begin.

Also, if you're still reading, get Guitar Pro 5. It is the best program out there for learning songs because it shows you the tab and plays it aswell, and you download files that contain a whole song of tabs for all the parts and plays them together and to the right time and you can slow it down and learn it step by step etc.