Hi, I'm new to this so I just downloaded the latest version of the Bitcoin_Qt client as it seemed like a good place to start and I'm waiting for it to sync up. It's taken about 9 hours to get to 12 weeks behind and my PC has been maxed out for most of that time. Is that to be expected?
Yes, it takes a great deal of time to download and sync the bitcoin blockchain. It should take about 24-36 hours to download the entire thing. Also, you can download a lightweight client such as mutlibit for fast usage.