Thanks guys!
@RoyK - for question 4, I know the board can be reprogrammed, but I was wondering whether or not the board was meant to stay with only one project once it's finished. For instance, in my school one student used a USB starter kit from Microchip (which ended up being a huge problem, which is why I'm not using it). After he finished programming it (and reporgramming it) until his project worked, his next step was to build a breadboard model of his starter kit, and then a PC board. In other words, he only used the starter kit to get everything working, then he replaced it because the starter kit was expensive and reusable for a different project. I was just wondering if this is usually done with the Aruduinos - when I get my project working completely, do I want to remove the Arduino so I can reuse it, and replace it with a PIC and a USB port?