when i reached keg island, the promised land, the clouds parted and happiness rained down. I'm never going back to bottleland.
Yep, I agree. I have been kegging since December 2008 (or was it 2007?), after bottling nearly 200 batches. The first time, I thought, "I should have done this years ago!". But it was the cost holding me back. With a cheap Craigslist fridge (50$), and three kegs and all the gear ($230), it was nearly $300 for the set up.
That makes me laugh now, because it was so expensive that I held off for several years and kept bottling. But when I won a football pool here on the forum, my winnings of $230 went for the kegging gear.
To use my favorite crude expression, kegging is t1ts!
But it is in investment so it takes some thinking about. If there is a chance that you don't really want to have fresh beer on tap for at least 6-8 months or so, then it's probably not worth it for you.
At a minimum, you'd need two kegs, a regulator, and a small co2 tank; plus a fridge/freezer. The cheapest "basic kit" I see on kegconnection.com (where I got my stuff) is $55 for the regulator and disconnects, $65 for the c02 tank, and $50 for the keg. You'd need more than one keg, just to have the next one online and ready when one empties. But you could get by with under $200 and picnic ("cobra") taps.
Space can be an issue- as a fridge does take up space. If you're already storing beer in a fridge, like in a garage, you could use the same fridge. We didn't have a second (or third or fourth) fridge at the time but now we do!