The Spartan 3E Starter Board is a bit pricey, but it is a very nice development board. There are other, cheaper boards, like the Nexys boards over at digilent.com, the Nexys II uses a Spartan 3 chipset, actually, the same as the starter board, but without many of the peripherals, no ADC, if I remember correctly.
Xilinx devices are probably the easiest for newcomers, but I'm sure that is a subjective comment.
Also check out Altera dev boards. Check a company called Terasic. Also, there are cheaper board makers, but I don't have their names. Google for Altera development board. Nice thing about altera is, if you use one of their Cyclone boards, they let you use the full too suite (internet version) including their IP suite and QSYS builder.