Hi Scott,
The carrera range goes from crap to pretty good in my opinion. the very base models are not really worth the money, you can get a better deal. but if you go for the higher end one (i think it's called a Vanquish or something like that) then they're not bad at all.
You might want to look at the boardman range, if you want to buy from HellFrauds. I have looked at these, and read reviews and they seem pretty good value.
My suggestion, if you're not tied to buying from
halfords though a Cycle2Work scheme like I was, would be to go to a god local independant bike shop and tell them you want to spend some money with them.
they'll find the best bike you can get for your budget.
On a side note, I think the main reason people don't rate the halfords Carrera range is that riding around on a Carrera, you'll ge branded as "that bloke who bought his bike from a car accessories shop"
If you let us know your budget, people will throw all sorts of makes and models at you to look in to.
For what it's worth, I bought a Claud Butler Sane Remo for my first road bike, it's a nice ride for a beginner. although it hardly sees any action now as I use my home-made fixed gear for everything.
Andy