Mountain Biking - bike buying advice

have roughly 400 pounds to spend on new bike, was looking for one of those sports hybrid types with 700cc tyres and good quality frame chainsets and all the rest of it, have looked at the ridgeback day 1 and a few others but all the jargon and shimano this and that is bamboozeling me, does anyone have any helpful advice as to what bike i should get, ive seen the ridgeback going for 369 on the net and 399 in tiso but was wondering if im maybe missing out on something better for same money or maybe its even worth my while spending a bit more as want best possible for my cash. Any help is appreciated. Just to add im looking for flat bar types.

If that is the type of bike you are looking for, you will probably get more relevant input in the commuting forum.

That last post's advice because with the 700cc tires you're not looking at mountain bikes, most if not all of which have 26" tires. I'm not sure exactly what make Ridgeback is but in the 700cc lineup of bike a couple of models I hear about alot are the Trek 7200FX and 7300FX and the Specialized Sirrus. Both of these have the larger 700cc tires but have an straight handlebar similiar to a mountain bike. There are some hybrids of course with 26' tires; I was looking at Marin Bikes 'Novato 9' in that type of commuter/urban bike. Another type that's recommended to people who seem to want a road type bike that can also go offroad (as most 700cc bikes aren't really meant to do that) is a cyclcross bike like the Specialized Tricross or the Surly Crosscheck. a bit more than your budget and also not flat handlebars but maybe give them a look. As far as Shimano and SRAM and other component jargon it's probably just a matter of reading about this stuff, asking question at bike shops and the like and in a month or two you'll know alot more than you do now! Also, try to get more info on a bike either by doing a search here or just google the bike and the word 'reviews' and see what turns up. Don't worry you'll get it...it's impossible to learn in 15 minutes what it took others a year or more to figure out!

Soma has some cool stuff