I'm just gonna weigh in here, senior members please feel free to smack me down if I'm silly: though it seems a majority of newbie keg'ers go with some fridge + tower setup, I think it's better to go with a chest freezer + collar + taps setup. For the following reasons:
1) Issues with foamy beer due to uninsulated towers; insulating towers or adding glycol lines+pumps seems way too much work. Though I've never done it, I'm guessing that disassembling tower lines for cleaning is a lot of work.
2) When you buy a tower it usually has taps that you don't want. A lot of people talk about replacing the included taps with Perlicks, or some other (forward sealing) tap that requires less maintenance. It's a waste of money to buy the inferior quality taps in the first place.
3) The smallest chest freezer (~5 cu. ft.) probably has more space & options than the standard compact refrigerator/freezer (Sanyo, etc.)
4) When you add a collar and a external temp controller to a chest freezer you can do it in a way that does not permanently alter the freezer. No guessing about where to drill holes. No anguish of hitting a line and hearing "pfffffff" which means you have to find a way to get that fridge to the dumps. Instead, you add your collar, all lines go through it, any regulators or CO2 distribution blocks are attached to it--no worries!
I'm a newbie keg'er too. My Frigidaire 7.2 cu. ft. chest freezer arrived yesterday. It was $225 total price delivered (this in California where the sales tax is 9.75%!) I feel like I have all the options in the world open to me as far as how many corneys I want to put in, if I want space for a carboy, putting the regulator inside or keeping it outside (for much faster gauge readings).
