[vacri]

Find a friend who really knows their guitar, and buy them lunch in exchange for a run-around of the second-hand and/or pawn shops. If you have gobs of cash to spend, sure, buy an expensive new one, but you can find decent guitars for cheap in the secondhand stores. I got my guitar (a kramer zx30) this way from a secondhand store that sells on consignment.

If you're going to get a cheap new guitar, again, take that friend if you can - cheap guitars can have a number of problems - the first one I ever tried couldn't even hold its tuning during the six-meter walk from behind the counter to hand it to me :)

I'd certainly recommend the lower end of the price spectrum and not the high end - what if you buy a pricey acoustic but the stuff you want to play turns out to be electric? Or vice versa. I thought I liked acoustic more and ended up loving the electric much more. And when you're learning, you really can't tell the subtle difference between models - slapping down a ton of money to find out it's not quite what you want might be a little off-putting. Start with a stepping stone, says I.

[Gravityloss]

There's a huge amount of guitars out there that people have bought and never played or played very little (a few hundred hours or so) so they are just as good as new. Musical instruments don't wear out much under use, so they are a smart thing to buy used. They also hold their value.