I've got a Lynxmotion Lynx 6 arm and it's much better.

Nice. It's not metal, but polycarbonate sounds tough enough for my purposes. Which option did you go for? For hackability reasons, I want one with a microcontroller, but am new to them. The "Smoothest operation" hint on the site rules out the OOPic-R, but leaves the decision between the BASIC Atom and BASIC Stamp 2. I do have some programming experience (C, C++, Java, ...), ease of use is not a concern to me, neither are the USD 20 price difference. Got a suggestion which one is right for me? BTW did you order them from the maker or did you find a trusty reseller in Europe?