> Is the installation of ActivePerl fairly straight 
forward?  Any common 
> pitfalls I should look out for?

I'm pretty green myself, but i just installed it on 
friday, and it was a piece of cake.

1) download the "MSI" from 
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/

2) Run the installer.

3) create a perl file (plain text, with a .pl 
extension):
<file contents>
# Perl 101
print ("Groovy, baby!\n");
</file contents>

4) go to the command line, and open the file
run > cmd
E:\whatever_filepath>groovy.pl

4-B) screen should show "Groovy, baby!". 

If you see that, you've successfully installed perl. 

g'luck. have no fear.
n.