Agreed. What makes a great beginners lathe? Only thing I can think of is et a solid, high quality machine in good nick (i.e. someting like this or a Standard modern) ...... it'll be way less frustrating giving you a fighting chance of making it through the long, tough flat part of a steep learning curve.
This one as a good selection of tooling so might be a good one to pounce on (if inspection shows it to be in good condition) I would avoid bare bones offerings. You want chucks, ideally collets, taper attachment, steadies.....more up front but much cheaper (and WAY less time) in the long run. Then when you want to do something, you can.
Do you really need to cut metric threads? Maybe you do, but just for fun, I'd argue it unless its something specific you have in mind where you are mating to some existing thread (which may be the case, I don't know your intentions). There is usually not a great need to. Most projects in my experience are in imperial, and you can always substitute one for the other and a huge percentage of of threads are gut with tap and die. Finally, on most lathes you can make it happen but adding a couple of gears between spindle and quick change gear box as the guys have noted. To insist on both will likely mean having to move to a newer machine meaning you wont (imo) get the same quality, or waiting for one of the rarer old ones that have both (like a DSG for example but that is a who different level of endeavour)
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