Need help buying cycling shoes

[Zen]

Most of the folks in my spin class seem to wear the SPD type cleats rather than the road shoes.

I think there are two questions to be answered here - cleat systems and shoe types.

For spinning the cleat system is cut and dried. They have to be SPD's
And as mentioned before , Performance or Nashbar cheapie shoes which will likely be a MTB type.

For road riding you'll have to decide on both shoes and clip systems which I won't even begin to address.

Road or MTB?
Frogs or SPD's?

Everybody has a preference.