the uno which is the bigger board with header for easy connections to a bread board is £20.82 + postage i'd say this is board you use over and over again until you are ready to shrink your design in to something smaller which is when you could reduce that down to a pro mini which is just a bit bigger then your average thumb print but does all the same stuff as an uno as far as i/o's go, but i'll be honest i'm not sure other than the dc jack and the usb port what difference there is between the 2.

i dont have a clue what i PIC is but when i get a bit of time later i'll have a gander. the reason for me to use an arduino is due to the fact they seem quite popular and have a lot of code floating around and i'm starting to pick up and understand certain bits of code. add to that i have a close friend who is very good with arduino coding i'm pretty sure i could go to him with something i am not sure about and he'd be able to do it. i bought my uno in a kit wire loads of wires, resistors led's ect to get me going.