knuckles:
you could salvage most of the parts to make a breadboard job ,with maybe a few new components .
its ridiculous that you cant fault find the board with any accuracy and then just bin it ,even though its not expensive .
the error messages are a pain ,its the same old out of sync message that you get for eveything
,i can tell you i am hacked of with arduinos and not spending another penny on them ,as i have too many dodgy untested modules.
quality control is non existanti just sent back a sparkfun FTDI board that dont work as well ..
Well that has not been my direct experience. In over three years working with about 6 different arduino boards, I have yet suffered a hardware failure. Keep in mind that an arduino board is not a general consumer plug and play type product. It assumes either a prior knowledge of general electronics fundamentals or the active ability to learn the theory and skills needed to safely design and build arduino based projects.
There is an arduino compatible board designed to protect users from most of the mistakes that a begineer is likely to do from damaging the board. It costs a little more then a standard arduino but in this case it may save you a lot in the long run. http://ruggedcircuits.com/html/ruggeduino.html
Lefty