Aaron, Well, even though this is the PIC list, there seems to be a growing movement towards other lower cost, more powerful uCs. Before settling on the PIC you might check out the AVR from Atmel and the Scenix chips. Any direction that you decide to go, $700 is not a bad budget for getting into a uC, but do you have _any_ electronics inventory and equipment at all ? If not, the $700 will go fast. I spent roughly $1000 and the one glaring gap in my workbench is the lack of an OScope. unfortunately, a good scope can cost bucks and it will be awhile before I can swing on. Here is what I did : 1) Decent DMM. I bought a $200 unit from Jameco. It's a Protek 506 and it's got quite a few features given the price. Definitely not a professional unit but I like it. 2) Good soldering iron. I bought a pretty good adjustable temp unit from Jameco for I think about $150. Considering the $20 one from Radio Shack I had before, I'm in heaven. 3) PicStart Plus+. I bought this through Digikey for $200, I think. It's made by MicroChip, supports a wide range of PICs, and is well integrated into MPLAB ( MicroChips free IDE ). 4) CCS C compiler for the PIC. This is a low cost C compiler for the PIC. Not the best but cheap at $99. 5) This last item is the hard part. Inventory. At first it seems that every time you turn around, you need something that you don't have. Here are a few general categories : 1) Resistors - Buy a large pack of assorted 2) Caps - This is harder, I bought a grab bag from Jameco and got mostly caps I don;t need. 3) Breadboard for prototyping 4) Protoboards 5) Connectors. I've slowly stocked many types of connectors but the ones most useful to me are the kind you see on computer boards that accept jumpers, ribbon cable, etc. You can get jumpers, ribbon cable connectors, and other connectors that make it easier to hook external components to your boards. 6) Chips. This is a hard one too. Trying to buy what you need and not what will sit in your drawer collecting dust. Some that I've found useful : 7805 voltage regulator, 555 timer, 74HC164, 165, 595, MAX232, etc. 7) Diodes. I bought quantities of several standard diodes simply because they're cheap. And there is no doubt you'll need them. 8) Transitors. I bought some of the standard PNP and NPN. I'm sure there's a lot I forgot. I hope I didn't go over board here . Let me know if you need to pick a fellow newbies brain Oh yeah, I almost forgot. You'll need some sort of power supply to power your circuits. I already had an adjustable voltage bench supply. I'm sure you can get away with much less. Eric