Most people wait awhile until they purchase a paintball gun.
I, on the other hand, bought one after my first game day. I checked out some sites on the web and read some articles in magazines on a some guns before I came to my final decision. The first one I looked into was the Spyder. I was really pleased with it's performance, and price. I surfed around and gather some information about it first, but found alot of posts and articles on it's problems.