Grant,
The only thing I can really recomend is buying (hopefully not with your own money) SILABS C8051F040 development kit because it's all I have really worked with. They give you 2 microcontroller boards, a programmer, IDE, and if you own KIEL or Raisonance compilers already, you are in business. The kits go for $500 USD. I don't believe you can compile the CAN demo programs with the 4K limitation of the development compilers, but it's been a long time and I may be wrong.

You can buy USB to CAN converters, I have one from Gridconnect, that allow you to send and recieve CAN messages and it works well. They also provide DLL's with there software (PCANView) that allow you to write your own windows prorams, but I have not used them as I'm not much of a windows programmer (except for Labview).

I may be trying a National Instruments CAN card soon, but have not researched it yet.

Hope this helps

Andy