colabi, that battery block has a known issue with potential shorting. Possibly what happened to yours. If you don't see that that is Sparkfun's design, their board and possibly your solution to contact Sparkfun on this for not putting notice / warning with their product ... I think you will give in without ever pursuing a solution that could have been yours. I do hope you pursue it.
I will also say that as far as other chips, that although I could get an 8 bit MPU for sub $10, I think that by the time I added all the components included with Edison I'd be way over cost. The Edison advantage is familiar x86 native language coding in a powerful resource rich small format.
