My Uno arrived today from HK, much earlier than expected. 
Installation and writing/uploading 'Hello World' was totally hassle free, guess it took about ten minutes. I'm already in love! Discovering the non-standard gap between digital pins 7 and 8 was the only unpleasant surprise so far. Makes it much harder to make DIY shields on prototype boards.
Now I have to study the Multiplexer/Driver Board once more to see how much is still useful. This will surely take some time...