Missing Buttons

Hello everyone, I seem to be missing some buttons under my mesh panel. I’m new to Blender so I don’t know if I need to activate this tools. In tutorials they mention to enable sub-surface by pressing the subsurf button. I don’ have this button. I am also missing the Decimator button. Do I need to download extra software? or is there an on button to turn these on. The picture below is what it needs to look like, but does not. Please help, I really want to use this program to its full potential. oh I also get this window that says:
“compiled with python version 2.4
‘import site’ failed; use -v for traceback
checking for installed python… no installed python found.”
etc.
I’m guessing this is causing my problem. Please advice. Thanks
http://geocities.com.nyud.net:8080/gauravnawani/tutorials/beginner/fig-4-subsurface.png

The python message is of no concern, python is only required when you want to get into scripting for blender.
These features and other have been moved into a modifier system you can find out about them here

link > http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Modifier_Stack
link > http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Subsurf
link > http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Decimate

The tutorial you are following is outdated , heres a link to a new tutorial.
Link . http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Your_First_Animation_in_30_plus_30_Minutes_Part_I

thanks for the reply, I will check these links out.