If you plan on living in the mainland, simplified is the used by 99.7% of the places.  Traditional is used in HK & Taiwan mainly.  Though, every few years someone starts making noise about bringing traditional chinese back to mainland China.  Nothing ever happens though.

Definitely simplified. When I studied back in high school/university my teachers taught both and gave us the option to choose which we wanted. I chose traditional because I assumed it'd be the better option. Visited China 3 years ago only to discover that literally NO ONE here uses it and it's basically a waste. Aside from impressing people occasionally when they realize I know them, it has served me literally no good and now that I am in university here I am studying the simplified. It's best to always be simple !!!

For things in day to day life then yes, simplified will do. But if you're interested in using Chinese longterm, I think it's best to jump in the deep end and first learn traditional. Learning traditional first helps you understand the origin of the character more and they're really quite fascinating to learn. The switch to simplified is easy and you'll have a solid foundation and understanding of characters to build on your Chinese from there.

If you learn simplified first, by the time traditional finally makes a comeback you will be on the same boat as most of the Chinese people here.

Thanks you guys I'm glad I asked.. I would have thought the same as ichick and studied the traditional. Who would have thunk that 500000000 years of tradition and history would allow them to simplify their language.

I'm learning simplified since I'm here in SH. but id love to learn and write a chinese letter in traditional to my wife someday