Check out some of these videos on Youtube. You may see a few tutorials to help you

every tablet I have bought has on it somewhere a user manual I would suggest you look through yours to find that manual. If you will give me the specifics of which tablet you bought exactly I can help you find your info.
Most android devices are pretty much the same since it is the same operating system, the different versions have some subtle differences so ICS will be a little different from Gingerbread say. But the basics are the same.

On any app store like say the Amazon app store you will need to set up your account even if you just want to download free kindle books from there to your device you will need an account to do that, once you have that and you have it set up with your kindle for android or the amazon app market it will show you your account info and you will see it exactly as if you were purchasing it from amazon.
Other app stores like the Google play store (formerly Android market) you will need a Google account.
GetJar same thing you have to set up an account to buy them. Some places you can download the free apps with out having an account.I would stick only will well known markets so you don't end up with a bunch of infections on your device.

here are a few articles that might help you
The Complete Android Guide covers pretty much everything android

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich complete guide

A User�s Guide to Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Android for Dummies- What Every Android User Should Know

Thank you so much for the information!
I was reading an article about Google's new tablet that mentioned it has a "stock" unmodified version of Android installed. The article implied that it was an advantage over a customized version. Do people install stock versions of Android on their tablets or ever completely update?

You may have heard the term rooted in connection to Android devices, if a tablet can be rooted then it can be altered and another "version" of android installed or the version on it can be altered in certain ways. Most manufacturers block the ability to root, not all but most which means you have what they give you and any updates will come to your through your updates on the device and yes they do send out updates including updating a device from say like Honeycomb to Ice cream sandwich. My Vizio has updated to the latest version of Honeycomb, the update to ICS is supposed to happen in the near future. So it is important to check your device to see if there are any updates waiting, usually it will appear on screen when you connect to wifi but in some cases you need to go to settings and check the update option.

The version on Google nexus 7 is actually a version that they created just for it it is a 4.1 , Ice Cream Sandwich is 4.0. It also has a name Jelly Bean.

for those interested this is a nice long article that looks at all aspects of the new Google nexus 7.
Google Nexus 7 review

The first tablet I had was a well reviewed Android ice cream sandwich model that came with no instructions whatsoever. The icons meant nothing to me and I didn't find it intuitive at all. It's saving grace was that it seemed no matter what I did it didn't break or have a coniption, like any other computer would. I didn't even have any crashes. Unfortunately, the screen was often unresponsive to touch, and the placement and function of the small buttons along it's edge gave my hand cramps. I wonder if the screen unresponsiveness might be caused by the very low desert humidity levels where I live.

The new one is a Toshiba Excite. So far I like it. Screen responsiveness is excellent. The blocky buttons along it's edge are well placed for my hands and they respond with a nice click sensation ( the first tablet's were vague). One thing that would make me like it better is to figure out how to turn down the volume or mute it, and a quick way to do it if I'm reading something in bed and an ad blares on. I haven't been intuitive enough so far to figure out how do to that.
Thanks for the help. The links were great and helpful. I'm going to rewatch a couple tomorrow.

Every one of my tablets has a volume rocker button on the side of the unit a simple touch of the rocker up or down adjust it, all the way down is mute.
In some reader programs there are easy onscreen actions to control things. For example in Aldiko if you slide your finger up and down the left side of the screen it changes the screen brightness.
But I'm sure that the tablet you have came with a pamphlet that at the very least showed the button placements and showed your volume control.

Which excite do you have the 7 or 10?
That is a very very nice tablet, has some awesome features. I wish I could afford one, you should be able to do darn near anything with that tablet.

I would highly recommended visiting or joining one of the dedicated android forums for the excite tablet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Androidtablet forums

Which excite do you have the 7 or 10?
That is a very very nice tablet, has some awesome features. I wish I could afford one, you should be able to do darn near anything with that tablet.

I would highly recommended visiting or joining one of the dedicated android forums for the excite tablet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Androidtablet forums

I want to thank everyone again for all the great information and links. Today I bought my first ebook, a recipe book, and then spent 4 hours on the phone to tech support trying to figure out how to bookmark a page. They couldn't figure it out either. They indicated the model is so new they aren't yet familiar with it. The help search function does a web search where the top results apply to android phones, not tablets. It was frustrating at times, but I learned a lot about how the system is supposed to work. Two tech people indicated my book app lacked a ribbon feature that makes bookmarks. We reset it to factory specs 3 times and started from scratch.

Early evening I took it back to where I bought it and the salesman helped me set up a Nook account. I bought the same recipe book. The bookmark function in this app worked perfectly. I compared a few pages of the book in the different programs with their separate files and they looked identical.

So things like bookmarks are a function of the app and not the OS? Saving is done automatically by some apps?

Later I purchased Discovery magazine. I was surprised that it indicated it would download about an hour later. I looked at the news app and was pleasantly surprised to see the list of newspapers. I'll read the news on it in the morning.

Yes each app has it's own features. It is alarming the tech support had you do all of that to your device, that is ridiculous and screams of lack of knowledge of the product.

Every reader programs that I have seen will bookmark upon closing to save your place, not all shows a ribbon. I have found simply click on the menu button and the list of features appears.
Have you gone through the android guide to understand how to use the buttons and menu guides?
I use aldiko to read my books it is easy to use. And don't buy a book more than once!!! You can use the same book in various readers. I think you need to go to a site like feedbooks.com and get a few free books to play with and learn your reader.
Please tell me what model you have so I can help you.
You have a great tablet let's get started right!

Another interesting day with an android tablet. Last night I bought Discover magazine from the Nook app store and it said it would take over an hour to prepare and download the current issue. No problem. At bedtime I left the tablet on thinking it needed to be on for the download to complete. This morning it seemed the download must have terminated because the app had closed, but the magazine wasn't in the library and I couldn't reach it online. I checked and had received an email receipt. I called tech and they told me to turn the tablet off and then back on. The magazine then was in my library, but everything there had ribbons saying "download," indicating I'd have to redownload everything. Tech confirmed this. O.K. So I did.

Later, I took the tablet to the market, planning to use the recipe book I bought on Nook for shopping. When I tried to open the book a box popped up that said wi-fi unavailable. Later I called tech, who didn't seem to have a solution, then took the tablet to Barnes and Noble (oddly, their ATT system wouldn't allow a download from the Nook store to my tablet) and to Office Depot. Everyone said I should be able to read a book or magazine offline, without wi-fi, but noone could figure out what to do to enable it.

This evening I figured I'd buy something from the Toshiba book store app. One of the techs had me set up an account during the bookmarks issue because she said she was most familiar with that app. Tonight I tried to log in and it wouldn't accept my user name and password. I confirmed they were correct as I had written them down. I had the site email my password and the correct password arrived in my email, so what's with this?

Does some of this just amount to requiring a network tablet and data plan for this sort of thing to work? The password thing makes me feel like I'm being singled out or something. It's getting weird.

Later I checked in to Yahoo on the tablet and when I logged out there was a tiny message box that said I'd made changes in my Yahoo account. I'm on a PC as I write this, checked Yahoo and didn't notice any changes. Anyone know what that's about?

Now that I'm safely on a PC I'll be reading all the previous posts. Thanks, everyone, in advance.

It's an Excite 10 AT305-T16.
I looked again, just now, on the tablet and could not find anything resembling a user manual. Maybe I still don't know where all I'm supposed to look? I'm just swiping the home screen. As I swipe there are 3 pages with icons on them.
Thanks for the info on the volume button.
I found a thin user guide bundled with the advertising offers in the box.

I tried to log in to the Toshiba account again this morning and it still wouldn't accept my email address and password. So I called Toshiba tech again. The tech was pleasant and we discussed all that has gone on so far, and we tried a couple things to see if we could get in to my account. Nothing worked. So he said it's time to return the tablet for a refund. He said Toshiba has a 15 day return policy. I'll be returning it this afternoon.