Had it for about a year and a half, works like a charm. Xilinx also had a kit for $100 (maybe $150) that had a Spartan 2 and a CoolRunner II board, which was great in the early days. I think it's since been superseded by a Spartan 3 kit, but I don't know the pricing.
There's fairly little choice in FPGA development software. Xilinx is what I've used, and it's easily the among the worst software I've ever encountered. But I've heard that the alternatives are no better. The fact that it works at all is no small accomplishment but it still lacks all elegance, usability, or reliability on the user end.
I've looked at several. fpga4fun.com's boards are actually among the worst deals, because they're (a) not exhaustively documented; and (b) expensive as heck.
The absolute best I've seen so far is the Nexys2 from Digilent. It's got the same Cypress FX2 high-speed USB chip and Spartan3E FPGA as the Xylo from fpga4fun.com/knjn.com but it costs $129 instead of $299, comes with full schematics, and gives you lots of switches, LEDs, and ports to work with too. Not to mention a good-sized external RAM (which I haven't played with yet).
I have an Analog Devices AD7760 eval board attached to my Nexys2's Hirose connector right now, and have had a lot of fun climbing the Verilog and JTAG learning curves with it.
Digilent also sells teaching materials to universities, but it might be possible to get a hold of them otherwise.
I actually know some of the Digilent guys--their cofounder is an adjunct professor at my school and teaches using Digilent boards and curricula. He's probably one of the most busy and productive people I've ever met. As it happens, there's enough crossover between his work as an adjunct professor and his work at Digilent that it's more of a benefit to him as a cofounder than a distraction. It also puts him in a convenient position to be his own first customer, though he has hundreds of universities using his stuff too.
