Yeah Maya's changed alot. I remember version 3 came out and you got 2 extra large boxes of proper manuals for EVERYT module in maya. Not so any more. When I bought version 5 I got a book with it called 'whats new' but everything is now pdf based.

I would talk to your reseller and see what the deal is. Nobody wants to fly blind in anything regardless of experience, I think you should have had a book like 'whats new in Maya 8' at least, I did with 5 and version 6 which Im still running.

Autodesk are a littl weird in their ethic to me right now, maybe it will change overtime, but they arent doing any favours customer wise, with all the fuss and annoyances over the last version of Maya my thoughts have been looking at 'Soft' or even Modo...

Jay