switch

well, getting ready for the switch for my new laptop, can I pose some questions for existing mac users? I'm comfortable with osx for standard operation, but I'm a big keyboard user and am wondering how to:

1. Quickly open a file browsing window on a local or network drive (on windows - press Win+R, type "//path/to/directory")

2. Open a file browsing window from a command prompt (on windows you'd type "start.")

I'm currently running PearPC to get myself up to speed, but I can't work out how to do these 2 things, any advice appreciated.