I'm going to get the starter kit, but since I have to pay for it, it's cheaper from Hacktronics. They call it something else, but it looks to be the same kit, or maybe better, for my purposes.
I was going for that too, but wanted the "Making Things Talk" book (which is also cheaper on Amazon). Getting the individual pieces for the kit on sparkfun was also cheaper than getting the kit, and you could get a full size breadboard too. Thanks for the find.
Hmm, I never thought to price them individually. I'd just assumed that the kit would be cheaper. I wonder how many kits they sell based on that assumption? Oh well. Even with shipping from hacktronics it was still $5 cheaper than sparkfun's base price before shipping. I built radios and stuff as a kid, but I've never done any micro-controller programming... should be fun. :)
http://www.hacktronics.com/Arduino/Arduino-Educational-Learn...
I wanted "Programming Interactivity" as well, which is cheaper on Amazon.