For someone beginning in photography and wanting to explore and learn lighting, tungsten-type quartz halogen lights have besides an economic advantage, the characteristic fact you can readily see the affect of the light on the subject, making the control of the lighting easier. In addition if you are using a digital camera, tungsten light is an effective illumination source to obtain good results with a digital camera, just be sure to set the white balance to "tungsten".

My first question is what is it that you want to photograph? If you want to shoot table top still lifes, look into fixtures that use daylight florescent bulbs, like the three setups I've reviewed on my web site:
http://bermangraphics.com/digital-jury-resources/digital-lighting.htm
Wish all the forums had UBBcode enabled.....