Rather than imparting my opinion, I'll share how Ansel Adams has already responded to this question:
"It is certainly inhibiting to adhere blindly to any existing equipment if one can change to a better selection; it is poor economy to continue the use of equipment on a purely habitual basis." - Ansel Adams (care nothing of brands, be flexible in your approach)
"It is significant that the greatest creative photographers use simple basic equipment - everything of adequate quality, nothing that is unessential. If the photographer will first think of the camera in its most elementary terms, he will better understand what equipment is most suitable for his needs. Rather than work from the complex down, it is better to work up from the simple!" - Ansel Adams
"As the photographer branches out into his chosen fields, his objective should be to acquire the simplest but most efficient equipment for his purposes." - Ansel Adams
The crux of this could be interpreted that equipment can often times act as a barrier to creative seeing, and that getting the hardware aspect of photography out of the way as soon as possible can be of high value. In other words, just choose something of sufficient quality and move on (and ignore the noise of technical chatter).
Graham