li-on for a senior design project

Hi everyone, I'm kind of new to this forum, and I wanted to ask the all knowing populous some question. I'm building a small arm 9 pda like device, and I want to power it from a small lithium ion battery. I've asked a couple of questions about li-on and decided I needed a battery management chip, because the batteries could blow up [:S]. I chose the bq24071 from TI, but I need to test the chip, and the only package available is a qfn package. Can anyone tell me if there is something out there that I can breadboard, test with a battery (preferrably something like the ubp103450), and get a pcb done without breaking the bank, (under 50 bucks, just for the chip and everything, not the pcb board, I do need to make a pcb board). I'm kind of new to this sort of design, its my first time dealing with this sort of thing, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for listening!

P.S. I'm going to UNLV, I'm a senior in electrical engineering.