Ive got $200 from grandfather, and I was wondering is it worth the money. If I did get it which one would be the best for a beginner-novice? Would the basic be the best thing for me?

Well I've never used it myself.

However, a friend of mine owns it and uses it and he likes it a lot. From what I could tell it has a lot to do with the size of your cam, crank etc, you plug all that in and it will calculate hp and such.

I'd imagine that the Begginner would be the best to go with.

I've used it a lot to build engines up, even a couple that actually got built for real! It's also a lot of fun just to build engines and dream about how much power you could have. The one thing that's important to remember is that it assumes everything is optimized, such as timing, jetting, atmospheric conditions, etc. to it does tend to overstate the power #'s

I got it free, but I'm a pirate according to law. I love it, I used it to pick my cam.

Actually there are a couple different ones out there:

Desktop Dynos (http://www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemType=PRODUCT&RS=1&itemID=2319&keyword=46032)
Desktop Dyno (http://www.storesonline.com/site/573683/product/186010)
More Prices (http://www.nextag.com/serv/main/buyer/outpdir.jsp?search=desktop+dyno&nxtg=1a6c0a1c0525-E99C09F2E7DDDD40&_rk=37687)

I've used it quite a bit over the years to play with possible combinations. It works well as long as you understand that it does presume optimal conditions. There are several versions, the basic is a little too generic when it comes to cylinder heads in my opinion. The better version allows you to input flow bench numbers, which is great, providing you have them. I use it primarily to look at horsepower and torque curves, to find out where a given combination will make best power, and take the actual numbers with a big grain of salt. It said my current combination should be making 660 HP. I have a hard time believing that. When I took those numbers and plugged them into their dragstrip program and built my car as close as possible, it predicted 9 second runs, again, optimized. In reality, I'm running mid 12s and still tuning it.

Devin