Mark,
Down here where we live you will get a lot of moisture in your compressor tank. That's why I highly recommend oil and water filters. They are cheap insurance. Unless you are running your compressor 8 hours a day, you don't have to spend the money for an auto-drain, They are nice, but not necessary for a hobbiests. Just add a simple ball valve below the tank and run your drain hose outside through a shop wall, If you put your compressor out on the porch, running the drain line outside is even easier. It takes less than a minute to drain your tank if set up this way.
If you have a porch , putting your compressor outside is the best way to go. Just make sure to keep the rain off it.
I have neither the outside space nor a porch so my compressor is inside. That's why I like my CalAirTools compressor. It is quiet. I leave it on all the time and it only cycles when I am using air. I would buy another CAT compressor in a heartbeat. The other brands mentioned are all good air compressors. It is just that my primary focus was a quiet compressor. If I had a place for a large compressor (outside) and planned to use a lot of air tools, I would purchase a compressor with an 80 gallon tank. I don't so I bought a small one,
Someone mentioned a two-stage pump. They are very nice and generally can support more cfm. Therefore you can get a faster recovery rate than a single stage. Even though this may sound like a cliche, try to figure your maximum use, how far you can stretch your budget, what options you want, and then go shopping.
You are getting good advice from the folks on this site. However, if you would like to chat, let me know I I will send you my mobile phone number via a private message.
Jon
The hose developed an aneurysm which stayed about the same size for a couple months. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that one of these days it might enlarge and blow out while I wasn't in the shop. Anyway, that's what it did and it probably ran continuously for a day or longer. When I walked in the shop there was so much smoke that I couldn't see across the room. The compressor pump was almost hot enough to glow red and was still giving off lots of heat several hours later and making those plinking sounds that you hear from a woodburning stove. I imagine that the cylinder walls are glazed with burned oil. That was quite a few years ago and the compressor is still running as if nothing happened.
