To add to your question, MRT2, about "what is decent"? It's also important for him to audition as many bikes as he can within the areas he'll be riding around frequently, if possible. Hopefully his LBS's will be willing to let him go a little far afield with the proper deposit (usually an ID and a CC number just in case you damage the bike). Here's my personal experience why:
While I plan on going on long-ish rides when I can get away for a weekend jaunt, the majority of my rides will be commuting the couple of miles to/from work, and within about 5 miles of where I live. Well, there is little to no flat land where I live. Everything is slightly inclined/declined, with a few punishing areas with steeper grades. So while someone who rides mostly flat terrain may have different priorities than me, I learned that fast, accurate shifting, and a higher number of gears on the cassette were most important to me, along with ride comfort. The loaner the bike shop gave me until mine arrives has 7 in the cassette and 3 in the front (vs. 11 and 2). I find the difference between gears on the cassette too great on the loaner when going up certain inclines, so sometimes I'm hunting between the front and rear gears. Couple that with the loaner being a lowest level FX that is quite a few years old...well let's just say shifting can be dicey sometimes. But when I rode the FX S5 and 6 around the same areas, shifting was much more a breeze since I was only changing the rear gears vs. the front, and the Shimano components on the new bikes are so much nicer than the loaner.
Since OP is just getting into biking (and I had been on a 25+ year hiatus, so current bike technology was basically unrecognizable to me), I'd wager we both couldn't hope to know everything we need to know about the type of bike we want just from reading online reviews and advice. I was so out of the game, and riding a lot of bikes from my LBS taught me so much about what I wanted (and didn't want) in a bike.
So my final advice for OP is to ride as many bikes as you can from as many shops as you can. Test out shifting. Test out inclines. If the LBS's will let him, ride a bit in the areas he plans to ride on the most. He seems to be in an area that has Trek, Specialized and Giant which are the Big Three, so he should be covered as far as variety.