Where do I start?

So, you want to take the plunge. You googled the net for informations about TeX, ConTeXt (lousy choice, google-wise) and related tools for Windows and were overwhelmed by lots of choices and contradicting informations. You are, in a word lost, and want to know what others have done.
Well, look for no more. My first post will show my setup.
My machine is an humble netbook, equipped with a SU4100 CULV-processor and 4gigs of ram. It's quite dtp-worthy, were not for its screen: I totally hate the 1366x768 format, I think it's a big step backwards for notebook users. :-(
My OS is a Windows 7 Professional SP1. It's as good as it gets, quick, responsive, rock-solid. NEVER experienced a BSOD, and I've got some serious RDBMS on it. (I never experienced a BSOD even on my XP machines from SP2 onwards -- this means 2004 or so, FWIW).
Let's dive into details:
Windows 7 is good. Command-line wise (and for a lot of other tasks), UNIX is better, even if PowerShell has some nifty ideas. With TeX, you will work with DOS shell an awful lot. So, you better download Unix Utils for Win32. There is a lot of good stuff that will help you work with TeX. I'll have you install unxutils first because you need wget to get your TeX distribution. After you've downloaded the zip file and installed somewhere, don't forget to add the path wher.exe files lie to your system path. You need to call those utilities from anywhere within your system!
My favorite TeX distro is W32Tex. It's quite a huge set of downloads (some 400 gigs), and I reccomend that you download all of it. To automate downloading process you can open a dos box and follow these commands:

mkdir textemp
mkdir c:\tex
cd textemp
wget -m -np http://ctan.ijs.si/mirror/w32tex/current/

After you've downloaded all this stuff, go to W32Tex and follow installation directions: these are simply straightforward. You will end up with a TeX distribution containing all you need to create good-looking document, since W32Tex is updated quite frequently.
Next, you'll need a good editor: if you want an IDE, more than a simple editor, you'll want TeXnic Center. Otherwise, the choice is endless. If you have a favorite editor, you'd better stick with it. Emacs and VI are available for win32 as well. I used to be a Notepad++ guy; recently, I've fallen in love with Programmer's Notepad. Small, fast and can use python for plugin building. What's not to love? :-)
You will also need some scripting languages handy:

• ConTeXt/pdfTeX relies upon Ruby
• I've written an HTML-to-ConTeXt utility in Python. I also use a GUI tool to set up fonts, and while the current version is written using C#, I plan to port it in Python.
• And if you want to use some nifty, feature-laden, OpenType fonts you'll need a Perl interpeter to run my own version of texfont, since the one provided with w32tex does work with TTF and Type1 fonts but fails with OTF fonts. The interpreter I use is Strawberry Perl

So, I think it's enough to set up your rig. Happy installing!