Hello Soberrider and welcome to Vapor talk. The short answer is, there is no short answer.
The righ hardware depends on a lot of differnt factors. The best anyone can really tell you is what works best for them and how they vape. Over the 2 years that I have been vaping my likes and dislikes have changed.
For batteries I like the eGo type or manual battery. I can share with you my current everyday setup.
1. eGo passthrough from vaportalk store
2. Juice from ivape.net
3. Carto's from gotvapes.com
The most important this to try differnt combinations until you find the combination that works for you.
I am not a big fan of cartomizers, I can always taste the filler material and they seem to dry out way too fast. The Vision Extreme Carto's from Got Vapes work very well for me. When I am not using them, I go with de-bridged Atty's and direct drip.
Hope this helps.