Krschultz, Thanks for the kind words, I hope you find them useful. Please let me know if there are any other topics you would like to see covered or if there are other aspects of open source hardware you would like more info on.
The Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer based on Texas Instruments OMAP35x processors featuring the ARM Cortex-A8 core with all of the expandability of today's desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise.
This looks like a good alternative in situations where the arduino is not sufficient.