AVR vs ARM vs PIC?

Personally I have a love for picaxe. These are normal PIC chips already loaded with code to run BASIC. They get rid of all the hastle of more complex languages and have the side benefit of not needing the programmer circuit board that PIC needs on it's own.As you know with the Arduino there are alot of librarys written for you for tasks people use alot.

Picaxe takes a different tact here. They have a ton of handy routines already written for you right on the chip. For example, to operate a servo it takes one very simple command to set it's position then it will maintain the servo signals for you until tell it otherwise.

These don't cost much more than blank PIC chips, so they are cheaper than buying Arduino stuff. They are PIC chips made simple, and I would suggest that as a managable next step after Arduino. I'm surprised they arent used more widely.

Alternatively, if you feel comfortable with a plain PIC then great. These are fantastic little things.It is awesome that you can program what used to be large circuit boards using a list of generic logic function chips and analogue components, and you would hope that someone had designed a special function ic for your intended purpose. The benefits of PIC for you are that they are cheap.

You also end up with pretty much a all in one chip solution, compared to ARM where you need a more complex board to run it. For alot of tasks ARM is just too expensive to justify itself. However, ARM has the benefit of being able to process more complex tasks which PIC runs out of steam with.

Those new mbed's look like pretty capable little beasts.So really, which way you go depends on how complex the task is that you want them to be able to handle. That's my 2 cents.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.