how the fricken hell do you update this thing, it says go to settings and about tablet/phone but theres nothing to do with updating, i phoned samsung and they pretty much hadn't a clue what i was talking about.

I updated someones recently by connecting it to kies same as the phones, have you tried that?

i just done it, and that was a bit of a pain in the arse, but its now 3.2 gingerbread

updated to 3.2.6 gingerbread but still don't see the option software update

After you've tapped "about phone" is there an option for "software"? If so, tap that - you should have an option in there to check for an update.