I rented a Medela Symphony from the ABA for 8 weeks - it was fantastic but as it's hospital/commercial grade it would have been over $1000 to buy. I ended up buying a Medela Pump In Style which I think is almost as good as the Symphony. It's also a double pump - i also purchased a hands free pump bra on Amazon dot com and it's fantastic - do the double pump while playing on the computer. I hated sitting there doing nothing but holding up the cone/bottle contraption. I was told that you can also make a decent pump bra by cutting holes in a good fitting sturdy sports bra.
Oh - and re: the colostrum - the midwives at Frances Perry did a great job of hand expressing and using the syringe to suck it up - I found it really hard to do myself (the one time I did I did something wrong and lost what I had - I cried!)