New Setup

Hi Folks,

I'm a newbie to the list, and have just ordered a Sherline CNC Ready
Mill, I live in London, England, so I'm expecting it to arrive here
within the next month or so. In the meantime, I've been working on
various plans and ideas for the controller part of the system - which
I shall be building myself. When I see the huge prices companies and
websites are demanding for simple parallel port drivers, it just
doesn't make sense to buy from them when I know I could make
something far superior for a much lower price.

I have one main question right now before I commit: Steppers or
Servos? So far I've been leaning towards steppers, driving them with
the L297/L298 and using a PIC uController to control them and take
input from digitizing probes etc (it'd be a serial device with an
error control protocol, and the PIC would take care of ramping
up/down speed and providing steps instead of the PC, so I could write
Windows driver software and performance would not be an issue)

I'm just wondering if anyone knows where cheap servo motors could be
found? Specifically, ones that are NEMA 23 compatible. If I could get
inexpensive enough servos, I'd most definately go with this route
rather than trying to hack mouse-encoders onto my finished stepper
setup at some distant point in the future.

Any advice/tips etc before I release the wispy spirit from power
drivers?