Home roasting, imho, is the way to go. Even if all you're doing is drip coffee -- not espresso -- you'll get noticeably better results with simple home roasting. Worse, if you're spending real money on coffee (like you do whole bean from Charbucks, for example), you can save a lot of money roasting your own. Like I said, I usually get the $5/lb beans, because they're quite good, and I can't justify Kona or JBM.
My first roaster, actually, was a going away gift from a friend -- a little 8 oz "Fresh Roast 8," iirc. It was great for doing tiny amounts of coffee, but wasn't up the kind of volume that I was going through. The heat gun thing, while cheesy and way more involved than the spiffy digitally controlled roasters that I lust after, is remarkably adequate.
What makes good beans "good?" A lot of that is a matter of personal taste. I like rich chocolate overtones with at little acidity as I can get. Some people like the "green" flavor that you get from roasting real light with some beans. Other people like the tang of the acidity in the beans. Of course, all of this assumes that the beans are freshly roasted -- if the beans aren't fresh, they just taste flat.
All that being said, I'm going to go make some espresso.
Dan