The bottom line to all of this is that if you get a PPL-H and do not buy your own helicopter, you'll be forced to rent. And the helicopters you rent will be small, two-seaters. And if you rent, you'll be forced to operate from and to airports. And if you're operating from and to airports, you might as well be flying an air-plane.
This varies in different countries, and when hiring from different schools. When I got my PPL(H), I particularly wanted to visit various friends who had fairly large fields that I could land in. I went with an instructor to the first one, he gave me advice on how to do it, and said I could land anywhere of similar size. I spent all that summer visiting friends for lunch! It was great fun.
At the next place I hired/hourbuilt from the rules were similar, and as I had a little more experience by then they were happy to let me land off airfield almost anywhere I liked. The front lawn of a stately home converted into flats was probably the most fun! Then there was the club trip to France, landing at Paris Heliport in the middle of the city, can't do that in an aeroplane. OK, so we were in an R22, and I'm probably the only woman only to have gone to Paris for the weekend with nothing but a spare T-shirt.... But the C150 in which I have a share is pretty tight on weight for continental touring too.
Concerning the not taking your hands off the controls, Rotordog is of course correct for most helicopters. But not for the R22 in which most of us learn. You have to hold the cyclic at all times; it doesn't have a reliable trim. You can take your hand off the collective, and of course you do, but it's good practice to make sure you could get to it fast in the unlikely event of engine failure.
To summarise:
Helicopters - tremendous fun to fly, great flexibility of landing places both normally and in an emergency (weather bad, land and have a cup of tea, then carry on), fantastic visibility, even the R22 looks very cool when you go to a fly-in
. BUT...expensive, probably a little harder overall to fly, need to be actually flown most of the time, R22 in particular is tiring on long flights, usually problems with fuel/weight/storage space on long flights.
Aeroplanes - relatively cheap, easier to find co-pilots or shares when buying, less tiring on long flights as you don't need to do so much, more space and comfort with some types. BUT...can actually get quite boring after a while, unless you do aeros or similar (at a similar cost to flying helicopters), can only land normally or in emergencies in a relatively large space, eg airfield.
There's probably more, but over to someone else.