recently got into chess. joined up to icc, after every game i evaluate my play using the default crafty programme.

couple of n00b questions. looking at the sticky/faq in this thread, there are some software options mentioned there. would it be better to get one of those rather than just doing what i do atm

(one thing that annoys me is not being able to try out alternative lines using crafty)

also i see that alot of people recomend the chess tactics server. i've been practising some tactics on chess.com's tactics trainer. is there any advantage with the chess tactics server. seems the interface is alot nicer on chess.com

finally, just some general advice. this is what i am doing atm

-watching videos on chess.com and icc
-doing the tactics training
-chess mentor on chess.com
-playing 15 min games and then having a quick look through each game to see where (not if) i went wrong

anything else that would help me?

Seems reasonable to me. Analysing your games by yourself before using a computer/program to do so is important.

If you want to analyse alternate lines, Arena is a one of the better free alternatives to Chessbase and Chess Assistant that you can use to open the .pgn file your ICC games are logged into (dunno if you have to separately enable this in newer versions of blitzin/dasher). There you can go through your games using an engine like Crafty (or Fire or Stockfish if you want free top of the line chess engines).

sp fire and stockfish are better than crafty? i hear you can put different engines into your icc client, are these alternative engines that you can exchange for crafty in the client?

so chessbase and chess assistant are products you have to pay for? arena does similar job but is free?

as i am a huge noob at this sort of thing, i wouldn't mind someone setting me up with an awesome chess setup in exchange for cash

Chessbase (and CA, i like CB though they get a lot of minus points for awful commercials on their website as of late) is better than Arena but costs some $$$. Fire and Stockfish are indeed better than Crafty and pretty much at par with the best commercial engine (Rybka). Chessbase + a database (comes included) + one of the engines mentioned is pretty much an awesome chess setup for any level. You already seem to know the right websites.
If you want to shell out money for chess improvement coaching is pretty cheap. I'd recommend shopping before committing $$ though, since I'd imagine most of the coaches are pretty bad.