Re: machines vs free weights
Hands down the Free weights are miles ahead in terms of giving result. As x2 mentioned, the the balancing the weight part can never be achieved by machines and can only be achieved by free weights.
Only time when working out with machine makes sense to me is when you already are in good shape and you have managed to get some muscle mass developed on your body at that time you can try working out with machines and they seem to work quite well in that case as you are just trying to hit the muscle and not worried about learning to balance the weights as you have already learned that.
So for a beginner i would definetly suggest to start working out using free weights only except seated row and lat pull down.
A nice way for a beginner would be to work muscles by doing mixture of heavy to light weight for a muscle, almost every muscle can be hit in two different ways, one by using heavy weights to gain mass and other by using lighter weights to tone the mass. For example one can start working shoulders by doing heavy weights for shoulder press ( either with dumbbells or barbell) to gain mass and then can proceed to lighter weights for frontal or lateral raise to tone the mass.