john1993:
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admittedly nice being able to plug in a new chip on those big socketed boards but pro-mini is so cheap at $2-$3 shipped dollars its almost not worth it.
It's a good point but the sub-$3 range is for the China variety of the clone. These clones often have varying pinouts, especially around the Vcc/Gnd area of the board. So caution needs to be utilized and the realization that one board ordered today may differ from one board ordered two months ago.
The other issue, which should be considered, is the need to have a soldering iron and decent skills in using said iron. Even if you just need to solder the headers for breadboard use. Soldering and unsoldering wires to the little boards will eventually cause copper foil lift at which time the board.
It is a cheap and viable solution, but not one that I would recommend for the "My First Arduino" award. Buying a UNO has many benefits for newbies. For EE's, HAM's, or ET's with hardware buildout experience... yea, go for the cheap... they generally work. My last shipment of 5 Pro Micros and 2 dead units... one was revived with reflashing the bootloader for the 32U4 but one is eternally dead. The previous 10 Pro Micros were 100%. 2 duds out of 15 may be an unacceptable rate of failure and most newbies will be unable to flash the 32U4: something to think about.
Ray