For beginners, I would always ask them these questions:
1. What kind of budget are you willing to spent? The answer to this question constitute whether you should go for some items in lesser cost for starting, and gradually get better things down the road. However, in this hobby "cheap" things might not get you very far sometimes, and if you've got very involved in this hobby then down the road you would get better equipment to replace the "cheap ones" and this makes you spend more money. If your budget is not tight, tend to shoot for something better, especially in the case of a radio set, might save you more money down the road.
2. How involved do you think you would be in the hobby? The answer to this question again ties somewhat to the answer to the first question. If you think you would be very involved then its better to spend more at first and it will save money down the road.
3. Do you have someone to fly besides yourself, or all you have is just yourself? This is very important. R/C helicopter is not something that someone could learn by himself easily, and reading "how to" books and videos might not get you too far. However, currently there are some tools besides those "how to" books and videos to make r/c helicopter flying easier, still there is nothing that could match help from flying buddies at the field. As a start, you should first locate the nearest flying field, go there and have a chat with helicopter flyers there, and try to know them, or if its a club then join it. These are the people that would offer help to you when you fly.
After you've answered the above question, then its time for shopping. These are the things that you need, assume you have nothing to start with:
1. Helicopter kit
2. Radio set that includes five servos and a gyro
3. Engine, glow plugs and exhaust
4. Starting equipment that includes a 12V battery, electric starter, starting adapter, and glow plug driver.
5. Tools that includes hex drivers, screwdrivers, wrench, pliers and some other special tools like pitch gauge
6. Training aids like "How to" books, videos, magazines, and a simulator
For helicopter kit selection, as a beginner, what your first priority is to get the most airborne time as possible. So ask around town and see what is the most popular helicopter and see if they've got adequate parts. At this moment, the most popular beginner helicopters are JR Ergo, Thunder Tiger Raptor and Hirobo Shuttle. On one hand, the JR Ergo is a medium size helicopter that is very stable and easy to learn with, but it comes with stacked frame design that might take some time to assemble and maintain. While helicopters with stacked frames design provides a very solid foundation for your helicopter to perform, it is also time consuming to assemble and maintain. In real life, all helicopter pilots crashes their helicopters, and the frequency for a beginner to crash their helicopter while learning is very high. As a result, if you get a stacked frame design helicopter, you might need to spend some more time to take care of your helicopter in case of assembly. On another hand, both the Hirobo Shuttle and Thunder Tiger Raptor are very basic helicopters for beginners. They use plastic frames that are sturdy, and the advantage of these frames are their crash resistance and almost maintenance free on crash. All of the above mentioned helicopters have the widest variety of parts and upgrades for you to choose. Price-wise, the Ergo might be a bit higher as a start compared to the Shuttle and Raptor.
One thing that I always preached is that don't look at the money value at the starting point but look for best value for the long run. In the long run, some "cheap stuffs" will bite you eventually. In my opinion, get the best radio set you could afford would be a very good investment to start. The reason behind this is while you could fix some upgrade parts to the helicopter and make it fly better, you could not do the same with radios, in other words, you are stuck with it. While at the earlier stage a good radio might seem to be expensive, but in the long run it would benefit you more and in fact save you more money. Yes, you could learn flying with a "cheap" radio, but when your skills progress you would outgrow the functions of a basic radio, then you would have to spend more to get another set, and your old radio will be left to rot. In addition, get better servos and better gyros would make you fly easier and save you more money down the road. (Same logic applies here as with radios) I always vote for JR radio cause they have very good user interface and are very easy to use. You need at least five channels for a helicopter, but having more channels does not hurt and since nowadays the grade of the radio ties with how many channels it has so you might well end up with an eight channel radio.
Second, get a good engine. OS engines is by far the easiest to work with. For other engines you might save some buck, or would have better output figures on paper, but they usually does not compare to the ease of starting and maintaining an OS engine.
Also, a good simulator will save you lots of money on crashes. When you crash a helicopter inside a simulator, all you have to do is just to press a key to revive it, while in real life you have to repair it. The best so far is the CSM Version 10 simulator. However, if you would go for good graphics and would sacrifice some realism then there is the Tru-Flite simulator. I have both simulators and personally preferred the CSM, cause the feeling of it is more "real". Both simulators would need to use your own radio to control, and its a good way as you could test your radio setting in the simulator.
As to starting equipment and tools, you could ask the local shop to help you select what's needed and what's not. These are usually commodity items and you won't make a big difference with these. They either fit or not.
Most would think that glow engine helicopters are harder to fly than electric ones cause most of them are smaller in size, NOT TRUE! I am not good in physics but I know a bigger helicopter definitely is more stable than a smaller helicopter, cause the bigger helicopter's mass is greater and its hard to be effected by environmental issues like wind. Second, most electric helicopters does not have very good power source. After full charge, most electric helicopter would give you around five minutes of flight time, but for the last minute the current would drop and that makes flying hard. Glow engine would go till the last drop of fuel. Also, glow engine's output is much more than electric motor in most cases, and thus gives better power for a helicopter. Sometime you need extra power to save the helicopter and with small electric helicopters power is usually not enough.
As to learn flying by yourself, I do not recommend that if you have a choice. R/C helicopter is very complicate, and it will be very hard if you have to do it by yourselves. Believe it or not, most instruction manuals are very clear and teach step by step how to assemble a helicopter, but to a beginner who has no help I could say in 80% chance they could not get it fly the first time. With R/C cars and boats, you could get them run easily, just the matter of how fast. Planes could fly easily too, even at a beginner's hands, but not with helicopters. Helicopters won't fly without a proper setup. Also, in some cases, when you think your helicopter is flying nicely, but when some other people change the setting for you on your transmitter it might transform into another machine that flies even better. I think that's the beauty of r/c helicopter, you learn things every time with everybody.