I've seen there are two kinds of installations for Phonegap, one goes through installing node.js and then phonegap and the other is done by extracting a zip file (like discussed here : How to install phonegap-2.7.0 for ios?) What are the differences? I want to know them before choosing my way.
Basically, zip was for phonegap/cordova 2.x and CLI (based on node-npm) is for cordova/phonegap 3.x
So if you're new to phonegap/cordova you should choose the CLI installation and use cordova or phonegap version 3.5
Choosing cordova or phonegap is an other subject, but if you don't plan on using phonegap build, I'd suggest Cordova.