You might hook-up with "The Geek Group" online. They're pretty helpful and have all kinds of cool projects going on. Sometimes, through them, you can get development kits that would often be to expensive for people on a budget, such as myself. As far as proto-boards (socket boards) go, Erik is right they can be rather finicky especially if you're new to circuit building, however, I believe the point is that most of the kits have bells and whistles attached that offer experience in making them work. From external memory to I/O port extenders to various communications standards. Now...if you're a brave soul and want to roll your own I will send you a schematic that you can build on a proto-board that has most of that stuff (you supply the parts) and I'll give you hints on how to make the proto-board a little less finicky. This way, when you are ready you can add to this circuit or use it as a future development platform.