I'm with Razbo and John on this one... go with the kind that is suited to the style of music you want to play. If you're going to play strictly classical, get a nylon stringed classical guitar. If you're more into just a "bread & butter" general purpose acoustic, go with a steel string guitar. Don't worry about sore fingers, you'll develop callouses pretty quickly. But just so you know, when Bryan Adams "got his first real six string" he didn't really "play it until his fingers bled".. I think he just got a bad blister... ;)