And say, like Midnight, someone has just jumped into .223 and 7.62x39 as well as 9mm pistol or some such.
And say this person just wanted to reload enough to keep up with his shooting, on a casual basis.
All of these calibers will load on a 3 hole Lee Turret press, which is the least costly of the rotating top semi-progressives at $67. This is the minimum press that can "do everything" for these calibers and at a speed that is so-so fair. Also, if you take the auto-rotate off the press and rotate it by hand, you can do all the common big rifle calibers as well. But, with .223 and 7.62x39 you can auto rotate if you want to.
There is a new bigger cast iron turret press from Lee that looks right good but costs a little more at $99. I'd pop for it if I were starting over as it can auto-rotate the big rifle cartridges and it looks REAL SOLID and much better built than the old aluminum 3 holer or 4 holer Lee stuff.
This is my recommended starting press for someone just getting into the game. 
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Now we poll the old reloaders for their accumulated knowledge & opinions.
I used to worry about reloading speed and volume production, but now that it is an enjoyment on its own I load most things other than volume 9mm/40S&W on a single stage cast iron press.
Why? Because I like the feel of it, I like the big ram coming up perfectly aligned by tightly fitted massive cast iron casting and chromed steel ram. I like KNOWING that bullet was seated perfectly square to the case, with no variation whatsoever due to slop in the mechanical clearances in a moving plate system. Speed isn't a goal for me any more.
Pistol, I will use a progressive. I do not think the little amount of clearance slop in a movable plate press really matters much to a pistol round any as the looseness of a pistol round in its chamber is a greater variable than the press slop.
I also now like to deprime and resize and then chemically clean then lube and then reprime with a hand priming tool rather than do it all on a progressive press. Most errors on progressive presses are caused by the repriming step, so by feeding the process with primed brass the progressive only has to keep up with loading the cases, powder charging and bullet seating, which is all very much easy do on all my progressive presses. Since I started doing this, reloading stoppages and errors have been ZERO, something which was not true when I tried to resize and reprime on them busy busy busy progressive presses.
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Something that is relatively new to me is citric acid and soap cleaning of brass. I will take a bulk batch of dirty fired brass and toss it into my big Dillon vibrator bowl with a teaspoon of citric acid powder (yep, the stuff that is used in canning) and some Dawn from the sink and enough water to cover the bottom of the bowl. The water should not exit the bowl even with the top open (and it will if you use too much water).
Some younger reloaders who have never bought a tumbler or a bowl just clean their brass by soaking for several hours to overnight. I've tried it and it works, but since I have the big vibrator bowl I will use it to cut down the cycle time to less than an hour.
So, instead of using walnut or corn cob media for hours and hours in a tumber to get brass clean, using citric acid and dishwashing soap for me the brass is clean inside an hour, plus all the crud inside the case and primer pockets is gone too. Chemical cleaning, neat stuff that.
No, it isn't as pretty as media and polish tumbled brass. Nothing beats media for shiny looking. But honestly, after six months all that shiny is gone anyway and it all looks pretty much the same by then.
Brass is then rinsed good in the sink to get rid of the citric acid and soap. Then I roll the brass in an old bath towel to get most of the water off of it. Brass still needs to be oven dried at 200 degrees to get rid of the interior water then it needs to be very lightly surface oiled for surface protection as the chemically cleaned surfaces are reactive to the air unless lightly oiled.
Rifle brass requires oiling anyway for size/deprime but this is just a surface protection for the pistol stuff as carbide dies don't care either way.
Your arm and your progressive press will like the lubed pistol brass better, as a lot of the herky jerky that progressives suffer from come from forced resizing unlubed cases by main force in dry carbide dies, them oiled cases just slide in nice and easy with no jerking on retraction. You will learn to like oiled pistol cases as they keep better over time too -- no verdigris or uneven tarnishing to the degree you may have seen in the past on your media processed brass.
Canola oil, the stuff your wife keeps around for cooking, is a good case lubricant and brass surface protectant -- just remember your goal is a fine very slight oily feel to the brass so DON'T OVERDO IT with the oil. A Walmart plastic bag is good for oiling, just stir the brass around inside the bag until brass and bag are very very slightly oily feeling.
A very very small tiny dribble of oil will oil up a LOT of brass ....
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