I second the suggestion on getting the white one. Everything I've been reading indicates that that's the one that is the easiest to modify by the average user (witness myself as the example of that), and having Android 2.0 means that you're not going to have a problem with most Android apps working on it. The majority of the free apps that I was looking at required at least Android 1.5 but some required 1.6 or higher. Some of the new ones require 2.1 which means I can't use them. No sense in crippling yourself right from the start.
A site that I've found that I can install Android applications from is slideme.org. There's an Android setting on the PDN that has to be set to allow installation of non-Android Market applications. Since I don't have Android Market installed, everything that I download and install is by definition non-Android Market.
EDIT: Just installed a lovely APK (Android application) called World Newspapers. It also allows you to access magazines.