As a noob, I feel choosing a pool is something between business and religion :-D
These has been my choices until now, and the reason of the switch.
Why not share yours, and help me and other noobs to understand businesses and religions of new world?

Actual sha256 power: 500 GH/s
* bitminter (2%+ fee, and too much variance from my noob perspective)
* cex.io (doesn't have automated payouts, and as most noobs it's sweet to have my coins daily in my locally encrypted wallet without worrying)
* eligius (my actual pool, solves previous problems, has free automated payouts spendable after 120 block confirmation)

I will be happy to choose a smaller pool and help the network to be resilient to oligopoly, if the pool has reasonable fees, variance, and possibly automated payouts.