Shopping for a microcontroller

After a time limited search the Atmel AVR seems very promising. PICs are dead to me, wasted money and time learning their inanities. It seems microcontrollers require a program to write the code (compiler) and one to download the code into the chip (programmer). Most chip boards as of 2010 have a USB connector to download the program into their Flash RAM so placing the chip in/out of a hardware chip programmer is no longer required. Arduino distributes their free IDE (Integrated Development Environment)- compile and program the chip interactively. Easy and Free : i like it. they provide many tutorials - code examples - libraries. Arduino designs several AVR board types, ranging from the Nano to the Mega :)

Atmel (manufacturer) Developer of the AVR
AVR 32K 64K 128K 256K Flash Ram to store the program

Arduino
Arduino Nano 3.0 (ATmega328) {could fit inside a HO train car:)}
Arduino Mega (ATmega1280)
Arduino's can be programmed on a Linux Mac PC
SmartProjects (Italy) handles the manufacturing of most of the Arduino products: sold globally from the stores listed on the Arduino website. Gravitech makes the Nano and sells Arduino products. SparkFun makes the Arduino LilyPad, Pro, and Mini Pro and sells Arduino products, accessories - sensors and provides code, datasheets, and tutorials.

AXON (ATmega640) "Designed by and for a robotics hobbyist" has many tutorials and a free collection of programming tools on-line.

Digilent Cerebot Plus : Atmel ATmega2560
not really sure if their free programmer does what, yet.
Digilent also sells FPGA Field programmable gate arrays boards : Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA which has 32MB Micron DDR SDRAM, 16MB Numonyx StrataFlash, VGA, PS/2, RS-232, 10/100 Ethernet (i have no idea what it takes to program this... from their ad: "designing digital circuits in VHDL or Verilog and using block diagrams, simulate them, and quickly and easily download them") .. so not a microcontroller anymore eh.


ARM ...microcontrollers requires LINUX, and not sure what else...
inex ARM7TDMI-S
Roboporium ARM-920T

and many more makers TI INTEL MOTOROLLA MMM... designed for corporations that purchase 1000s i guess ...

Seems like at this price/point a netbook that had many I/O (sensor) lines and Servo/Motor controllers would be what would interest me... or run an AVR microcontroller with commands over a USB-serial line from the netbook. Most netbooks have 1G ram, 1.66GHz processor, 160GB hard drive, a 'real' screen and keyboard, webcam-microphone-speakers, USB and several types of networking: hardwired Ethernet, wireless...