Hi Hotrod192!
Not sure where you are located and you may wish to either call or e-mail Bruce at Reynolds Electronics. ( http://www.rentron.com/contact.htm ). Another excellent person would be Daniel Taylor at http://www.melabs.com. Both can and will guide you with the best selections for your requirements and most important budget! One suggestion when discussing options is to keep an eye on future "upgrades" or products that can be upgradeable. For me I have an old PICSTART Plus for many years and one of the nice parts in the past was knowing I could upgrade the internal circuit board.

Another consideration is to get a solderless breadboards to try out your designs. http://www.digikey.com/product-searc...0?k=breadboard . Then when you are happy with your results you can build your final version on "Vectorboard" ( http://www.digikey.com/product-searc...8?k=breadboard )

Hope this makes things easier for you.

Best, Ed