The kind of guitar you should get also depends largely on how serious you are about learning. If you can honestly say your going to be practicing and carrying on with this, then something in the $400 USD price range would probably do you good for a long time. It's never a good idea to buy a relaly expensive guitar starting out, but it can also be counter-productive to buy a really cheap guitar starting out.
As Dev said, strings are definitley important and you should definitley always have spare ones. The nice thing about guitar is the strings are only about a quarter cost of the strings for a 4 string Bass. >=|
For your Amp, you definitley wont need anything big to start out with, but again, if you do intend to follow through, get a good quality starter amp. I believe Marshall has some smaller amps they make which would probably be a good starting point.
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