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Good question, brilliant replies, back in the dark days of the last centuary (you know about the time when England was last winning the world cup!) mum and dad gave me a guitar and a school teacher was kind enough to give up his lunch breaks to try and teach me some songs using chords.  Our family moved and I dropped out of guitar playing after a few years, never having progressed much. A couple of years ago I took it up again and a performer at our local pub said "learn barre chords its worth it in the long run" A few false starts and wow was he right.
Someone on Chordie, to my shame I can't remember who, was good enough to mail me a chart with all the finger positions for each type of note (major, minor, 7ths etc, etc, working off the root note (the position on the 5th or 6th string)  for barre chords, its been invaluable to me so I will pass it on to you vie e-mail as i dont know if I would be allowed to post it here or even how I could post it here! Hope it will be of assistance. Stick with it when you start getting the hang of it and they start sounding right it all suddenly makes sense!

Congrats on the new guitar and for raising such sensible wise children! lucky chap. I would ask the girls if they got it from a music store/shop even over the internet its highly likely a music based internet shop would open the kit box up and inspect/set up the guitar prior to sending it out, more likely should the girls have brought it directly from a high street music shop. In the event they got it from a catalouge shop ie A*G*S or Tinywoods (UK readers will know who I mean) then its a case of goods into the warehouse, goods out to the store, i dont want to cause offence but thats the nature of thier business and thats why the prices are cheaper. the thing to do is to get it out the box connect it up, tune it and strum a bit. hows your index finger feel holding down the first and second string on the first fret up by the nut? is it no effort just a gentle sqeeze? good. if it feels like your index finger is running over a cheese grater; not good! now let your index finger recover. Lay the guitar on a table with a good clothe or towel under it (no point in upsetting the misses by scratching the best french polished dining table!) Strike a string low e is a good starter whilst its still ringing bring your finger to just kiss the string above the 12 fret, not pressed down hard just the minimum amount of skin contact. does it go up an octave? if it goes up an octave on every string at or nearly  at the 12th fret and your not playing a cheese grater then its looking good that it was set up at the shop
now try freting each string from the 1st to the 13th fret and plucking each string gently at each fret position, Any buzz? No? you got a good one. enjoy
a few buzzes, well play it for a week or so until shopping UK gets back to normal (which also gives the guitar wood a chance to aclimatise to your centrally heated house after being in cold unheated warehouses and container ships for the last 6 months.) this is not the place to explain the finer points of neck adjustment. If any of the bad bits mentioned above still persist and you are still unsure what to do and set up information is available on the web (but you can do more harm than good very quickly!!),  then take it to your local musical instrument shop for an opinion, they may offer to do it for free if its a minor adjustment, especially if your there to buy a set of strings as 'spares'. Come on at £7. 00 approx its not a bad investment for thier advice and you will need them sooner or later! I set up my first electric (catalouge brought awful set up) guitar 2 years ago thanks to a chap based in USA over the internet called patrick coleman who was fantastic in my 'hour of need' so i owe a debt. should you need any more advice/help dont hesitate to e-mail me.
happy playing,
ken

i cant believe I'm responding to this but... when mates ask me which guitar I'm taking out to jam with, if its the Washburn Maverick its "smokey joe" on account of its yellow smokey finish (I know washburn have a term for it but I can never remember it! If I'm going with the Burns Marquee its "Isambard" The reason being (and this is abit convaluted so stay awake) IF Enzio Ferrari had designed a guitar it would be a Fender Stratocaster, all sleek and minimal, If Isambard Kingdom Brunel had designed a guitar it would have turned out as a Burns Marquee, solidly engineered, quirky but does the job well (those in UK can look at the Tamar Rail bridge or SS Great Britain for reference). Mmm a bit worrying they are both blokes names given some of the other responses, still I havn't got a name for the Ashton semi yet which is translucent green in colour so that could be rectified now.
Snot should do it, yep Snot it is! Sorted.

Thanks for your thoughts, much appreciated I'm looking to replace my existing cheap 'strat copy' hence looking for 3 x single coil options with improved quality I just feel the X33 would fit the bill but heho dont do it in this country it would appear. thanks again. K

Gosh that was a quick response, i've check the site and it seems to be just the thing i was looking for as a starter.
Thanks for your response.
Ken.