Welcome aboard Keith! Learning guitar is a lot of fun - I'm sure you will enjoy it.

A consideration with changing string guages is that your guitar may (more likely will) require a setup afterwards. This is especially true with guitars that have tremolo systems like the floating bridge on a strat. When you go with a heavier guage, there is more string tension, which will lift the floating bridge higher than normal. This in turn rasies your action. Probably not what you were looking for :-).

On an acoustic, it's probably best to stick with the guage recommended by the manufacturer. A friend of mine accidentally put heavier strings which messed up his setup. Even after pulling the strings off and going back the the original guage, the truss rod had to be adjusted.

I'm not saying you shouldn't experiment (I am right now), but just be aware of what you may be opening yourself up to. It was an eye opener when I first put 11's on my strat that came with 9's!!

Regarding tone - yes the string guage impacts tone. On my strat, I switched to 11's for a number of reasons and used them for years. As I got back into it recently, I noticed that my strat sounded flat and dull. I realized that it was the string guage. I switched back to 9's and the trebbly twang of the strat came back. I like the feel of the 10's on my les paul, so my next experiment will be to put 10's on my strat. I hope to get a happy medium there - good feel with genuine strat tone.