welcome to acidmods damon, the introduce yourself thread is under general discussion at the top of the home board, and these questions should be under the xbox360 board, but thats ok. as far as building your own programmer, I am unsure of one that will work with a laptop. I know of a cheap one for a desktop with a serial port, but not a laptop.
the chips are actually about a $1.10ea. and you must calculate the time involved in ordering them, writing a program, programming the chip, and mailing it to you, you got the best deal I have ever seen!! winpic is a great program, i use it all the time. but you need to order a usb programmer. make sure to read all the documentation and make sure it programs through usb. there are some that are powered by usb and program through serialport. which will not work for a laptop.
look at the open source thread on the main page, there is some good info there