Well, I finally got to go out and pick out a new guitar today, so I can resume my hackneyed attempts at playing the durn thing. I had scoped out a Yamaha at one store that I considered my "fallback" option. It had the guitar, a gig bag, picks, a strap, an instructional DVD, and a tuner (a must for me; I can't tune it very well without one).
So I headed down to the local music store today to check out their selections. I had already decided that i'd prefer to have a starter pack which includes everything you need. As I asked the salesman, he pointed me to several good starter packs: one a Fender, one a Yamaha, one an Ibanez, with similar accessories.
While all three are quality guitars, I was torn between the Fender and the Ibanez. As I was checking them out, the salesman pointed out another package that, instead of a gig bag, had a HARD case (it was about $70 more than the one with the gig bag, and was a slightly better quality guitar). The hard case would eventually be a purchase item anyway, so now I was down to two guitars, both made by Ibanez, one was on my list because it was black, the other because of the hard case. I chose the one with the hard case.
Now to get on to the business of playing.