As an old time gamer, I was hesitant to jump on the 5E bandwagon and basically stayed away from it for the first year. But I came across the starter set on Amazon and decided to buy it, and having read through it, I fell in love with the new shiny stuff
So, I'm currently running an online game and it is moving along quite nicely. The game is still in the early stages, but I am having a lot of fun. I really like the blend of rules and things move along quickly. Monsters have their own quirks and abilities and the pre-gen characters for the game are very interesting and fun to work with. The rules are easy to understand and right out of the box, there was very little prep work to get a game going.
So...if you are interested, I would start with buying the Starter Set > in it you get the basic rules, a complete adventure with pre-gen characters, and a set of dice! And for under 20 bucks, that's a good place to start.