Getting hands dirty with electronics for newbies
silencio: I was in the same position as you a while ago..some people I know were buying some Parallax products and wanted to know if I were interested in joining them to get a volume discount, so I got some of their products..I'm not sure what kind of stuff you wanted to program, but I've done some small but cool little toys and projects with their propeller and javelin microcontrollers - and they had some intro sets too I think. Lots of extras you could add on like GPS and bluetooth (for $ of course).I've really wanted to check out the Arduino boards, but no time, so I couldn't give you any sort of comparison I'm afraid. Might as well take this opportunity to purchase one while I still remember, too ;)