<p>Anyone know of a link to a good article/tutorial for getting started using jQuery for AJAX calls rather than ASP.NET AJAX? I'm trying to avoid using UpdatePanels entirely in this app, which I haven't been able to accomplish in the past.</p>

Here are a few links:
A Look Into JQuery API (archived)
Using FireBug Profiler to Dig Deep into MS AJAX and JQuery API
(archived)
On Demand Loading Using JQuery Ajax API (archived)