There's a reason for it - a lot of us started on conversions (or atleast I did) and they just_aren't_worth_it. The geometry is not right, in my case, parts were hard to come by.... I could go on and on.

So for a newb who has just stumbled across this fixed gear trend, I would 99.99% of the time steer them towards BikesDirect. For the money and time invested, you just cannot beat the prices. Later on down the road, when this newb is ready to upgrade, they'll have a better idea of what they did and did not like about the BikesDirect bike, and maybe they'll end up on something a step up like an IRO or Surly.