Laurel,
Perhaps neither.....
I'm assuming from your post that you are in the midst of your BOW course. If so, I would wait on the gear. I would agree with Rachel -- if you rush out to buy gear now, you will end up replacing it later because you are making uninformed purchase decisions. You can do tons of research on what gear you want, but until you have some dives under your belt and get experience with various types of gear, you won't know what gear you really want (weight integration, pockets, rear inflate, etc., etc., etc.). Your local dive shop will sell you what they have in stock.........as to whether this is the right gear for you....... This is probably less of a risk with regulators.....although some folks have strong preferences for and against things like first stage swivels, DIN vs. yoke, etc.
Rachel also makes a good point about trying to cut down on the number of variables while trying to refine your skills -- still, I would wait as long as possible before buying your gear....you'll end up much happier.
About the course -- again, getting more experience is important before taking that course.....having some post-BOW dives under your belt will help you get much more out of the AOW course than if you go into right away. Think of it like going directly from receiving your driver's license to race car driving school. It would be hard to start learning advance skills before you have the basics down. Also, if you don't own your own gear, do you really want to start doing deeper dives with rental gear....?
My $0.02.
-Chris