Lpc2000

I really like the doodads that come on the EA education board, and the price is great.  I am 
thinking about getting this instead of the Olimex/Keil/IAR LPC2148 boards unless 
someone here can pursuade me why one of the other boards is better (I'm all ears!).

I'm also contemplating spending the extra money to get the Embest IDE and UNetICE JTag 
debugger combo to round out my development environment.  I'll hold out hope that one 
day a free toolchain will be available on OS X that can talk to the UNetICE, but until then, I 
can work with XP.

I can justify the cost of the Embest IDE+UnetICE (about $1400).  I would have an 
unrestricted development platform with this (I think?).  I have looked at what IAR and Keil 
offers, and I cannot afford their unrestricted IDE options, only the code-size restricted 
compilers.

Given that my primary goal right now is to be experienced programming and debugging 
device drivers for FreeRTOS and uCOS/II (running on ARM), what advice can you guys give 
me as far as the pros/cons of purchasing the Embest product versus spending less and 
going with the more restricted setups from IAR and Keil?

I want to buy software/hardware with room for me to grow into, but I'm limited to about 
$1500 right now.

Thanks!
-Jeff