You're getting the right info. Expensive speaker wire is totally unnecessary. All you need is good, copper wire of a thick enough gauge to avoid impedence high enough to affect the signal in any audible way. For any run up to 50 feet, 12 gauge copper wire is all you need. Go for 10 gauge if the run is between 50 and 100 feet.
Bluejeanscable.com has excellent speaker wire - particularly for in-wall runs.
Monoprice has already been mentioned.
I also really like
Axiom's bulk speaker wire just because it's got a nice, black jacket (rather than grey, white or clear) and because it is extremely flexible and easy to bend into tight corners.
As the others have said, bi-wiring does nothing. The only reason to run two leads to each speaker is if you are bi-amplifying your speakers or bypassing the speakers' internal cross-overs. Otherwise, all bi-wiring is doing is creating a thicker cable with worse inductance characteristics than just buying a thicker gauge single cable.
Save your money and use it to purchase something worth-while! You've obviously come across magazines or ads that make all sorts of ridiculous claims about speaker wire. Otherwise, you would never consider spending so much on speaker cables! come back to common sense and reason. All your speaker wire has to do is carry a low frequency (relatively speaking - highest audio goes is 20 kHz, so we're no where close to the MHz or GHz ranges here!), high power (Watts instead of milliWatts) signal a short distance. There is no magic here. Just very basic electricity. A cable or wire cannot improve your sound. The only possible difference it can make is to screw something up! Regular copper wire of a nice thickness will carry that signal perfectly. All of that money you would have spent ($600/run?!) just disappears and you get nothing for it. Just a really expensive wire and people laughing at how they actually got you to pay such a ridiculous price for a 10 foot length of copper!
