Yes, those pre-printed boards are nice, but that's not how the Arduino shield from Sparkfun comes. Most of the prototyping boards now seem to be of this (unconnected) type, so I figure there's got to be some good tutorials out there. I was planning on using jumpers on the TOP of the board to get most of the way interconnected, and then bridge the 0.1in gap on the backside with solder, figuring that maybe those little metal rings were designed for making little solder bridges easy. It's a bit hard to see how I would connect wires to an IC socket, for example, on the top of the board. I appreciate your quick reply...