So I like you started out my hunt just recently in the cheaper end of gig-e. I happen to work at a pretty top notch tech university so I had quite a few experts at hand to discuss this with.
Going cheap is not bad if you aren't looking for more than some relatively fast transfers but if you are interested in any sort of expansion later on or are worried about preserving QoS for voip or anything, for a little but more you can get pretty decent switches for a moderate price.
I went with Dell's powerconnect switches. The 16 port managed gig-e switch is only 80 dollars and lacks only jumbo frame support which for many is not a big deal.
The management options are pretty good but it is limited by having only a web interface to control it.
I am planning on doing a lot of voip stuff and create vlans for a lot of my machines so it was the right choice for me. If I had gone cheap I would have paid later to patchwork it together so I am glad I went whole hog right now.
It really is need driven. What are you going to do now and what are you planning to do later. If all you need is to alleviate sporadic network floods from large transfers going cheap is the way to go.
