[support] Views, Panels etc

Hi All, I am trying to construct a page with just 2 cols and x rows. Should be populated by any content type named portfolio (screen shot images of work done). I created a view pretty quickly but am now confused about whether or not using panels will bring some benefit. In Tomlinson's book "Beginning Drupal 7" there is not too much detail to answer the questions I have and the examples are hopelessly out of date too. There also seem to be a lot of other features in Drupal I could possibly use, not documented in the book I am going to wade thru the online docs but thought your experience could help me and us.

Thanks Tony