Hey no problem, we've touched on a bit of everything here!
The board I have is the Digilent Nexys2, which I got a few years ago for $100 with an academic discount. Apparently they have a Nexys3 now, with a Xilinx Spartan 6 (vs the Spartan 3 on my board). If you get that one you can use the new Xilinx "Vivado" development environment, which is supposed to have some improvements. There's also the Basys2 which is super cheap if you're a student.
The other direction to go is Altera, which I've heard has a better development environment. However, their boards are a little more expensive.
Both Xilinx and Altera have free (limited) licenses for their software. One of the biggest differences is that Altera's free license gives you access to a logic analyzer tool that lets you see signal timings on your device, which can be very handy.
The board I have is the Digilent Nexys2, which I got a few years ago for $100 with an academic discount. Apparently they have a Nexys3 now, with a Xilinx Spartan 6 (vs the Spartan 3 on my board). If you get that one you can use the new Xilinx "Vivado" development environment, which is supposed to have some improvements. There's also the Basys2 which is super cheap if you're a student.
The other direction to go is Altera, which I've heard has a better development environment. However, their boards are a little more expensive.
Both Xilinx and Altera have free (limited) licenses for their software. One of the biggest differences is that Altera's free license gives you access to a logic analyzer tool that lets you see signal timings on your device, which can be very handy.