Both of the components kits look good for learning and small projects, I just want to note that if you want to build something which will be reliable and last long (for example home automation projects), buy components from reliable sources like element14, digikey, mouser etc.
Another thing to consider is microcontrollers (or MCU's, uC).
These are chips that can be programmed from your PC - If you like hardware level proggraming (i.e. messing with bits) go for AVR or PIC, if you like high level proggraming with lots of libraries go for arduino (which is actually based on an AVR)