HRM Decisions, Decisions, Decisions...

I've been working out now for 2 months and like most fledgling triathletes I am getting a real hankering for dropping some dollars on my sport. Several HRM's have caught my fancy in the past few weeks and I need some help deciding, so I am turning to yall once again for advice.

First I am going to narrow the field down to two brands. Suunto and Polar. This will rule out Garmin & Timex as well as some lesser known brands. I am not discounting the quality but it's more a matter of price. My local Sam's Club has the Suunto T3 for $95 bucks. That seems like a good deal to me, what are yall's thoughts. However, the best bang for the buck I can find with Polar is the F11 and it's $89 on eBay with $10.00 S&H.

From what I can tell it's a question of how many thousands of features you want, as to what the price is. My question is how many seasoned users of HRMs use all those features? I can't imagine they are all absolutely necessary to performance of an ordinary beginner age-grouper? If anyone uses a cheaper model other than the 2 I've mentioned and gets accurate and consistent results with it please let me know.

Thanks to all BT'ers for your help!

Mike512