There are two versions of Pitman in use today - Pitman New Era, which has been around since the 1922, and Pitman 2000 which came out in 1975. You can buy reference books for both systems, but they are slightly different.

Pitman New Era is FAST. It is a more streamlined, more consistent version of the same Pitman used in the 1800s, and if you can read New Era, it's not too difficult to read the old versions too. New Era was designed for court and parliamentary reporting, where the reporter had to keep track of dialogue that could sometimes be very rapid. The system is capable of extremely high speeds (over 200 wpm), but the "memory load" of the system is heavy - there are hundreds of special shortcut words and phrases ("grammalogues") which must be learned. The grammalogues are only a little briefer than the way the words would be written by following the rules, but since these shortcuts represent 60-70% of everyday English, the cumulative saving in time is significant.

Pitman 2000 is much easier. It's a "Lite" version of Pitman, designed specifically for speed of learning. By the 1970s, shorthand was mainly being used by secretaries to take dictation, where very high speeds were no longer necessary. About 70% of the words which had to be memorized as grammalogues in New Era are written out in Pitman 2000, and a simpler (but longer) system is used for verb endings like "-ed" and "-ing". The number of rules and exceptions to rules is greatly reduced. The heavy dot, which Pitman New Era used to distinguish between short and long vowels, was eliminated. Its designers estimated that Pitman 2000 was capable of speeds up to 140 words per minute.

Unlike previous incarnations of Ptiman, Pitman 2000 did not replace the system that came before it, and New Era stayed in print. Those who wanted shorthand for the office learned Pitman 2000. Those who wanted the highest speed learned New Era.