Throwing my 2 cents in.
Goss, you need to take a chill pill, you're worse than a girl on her period, just relax. xD
Newbie whom I don't know. I play 40k, got into it recently, I am broke but have managed to get a little over 2000 points and love the game, I play spacewolves (sub chapter of the space marines). It's really easy to pick up and the fact that the community is both amazing and so willing to help you out is a great reason to pick up 40k.
Fantasy is cool, I don't play myself, but I know people who do, it's not played nearly as often, harder to understand from what I've seen, less of an active community and things of that nature. Some players will play less than 1k point games for 40k, just depends on who you go to. I would personally play a game of any amount of points because I just enjoy playing the game and figuring out what my army can do at each point value, so if you do pick it up I'll be more than willing to play you.
If you decide on 40k (which I personally recommend) then space marines is an awesome choice. Not only are they easy to learn, they are pretty cheap (cheapest of all armies I think) and are great all around when it comes to stats and stuff.
Either way the choice is yours, you have some pretty informed people telling you their opinions right now, do with it what you will. Good luck and have fun with what you do decide to choose.
Oh and Ian is 100% correct, if you don't have at least 200 dollars to spend on this at the beginning you shouldn't really start right now. It's 27 ish for the codex, 8 for glue to put it together, extra money on top of that if you start painting right away, then the money you need for at least 1 HQ and 2 troop choices (the minimum to play a game against someone, there are few exceptions).
-Alley