Welcome to RadioReference.com!!! It is a great radio for picking up analog transmissions. In order to give you better advice, we'd need to know what specifically you want to listen to and where you are.
The first thing you're probably going to need to do is program it (unless you paid to have that done already). Get yourself the USB cable (RS 20-047 or from GRE) and some software. I use WIN97 (www.starrsoft.com) which comes with a 30 day free trial.
advice? hard to give. it's a powerful scanner capable of many things. start by reading the manual, program in all your local channels, see what you find, figure out what you like.
It will work nicely for what you want for conventional frequencies. It will even monitor the Asheville trunked system. Have you checked out the database here on radio reference? No problem filling up the scanner
Larry