$125 for a data collection system is as inexpensive as you will get. You will spend more cobbling together something non-DataQ based than the $125 cost. I just went through this with a University. They went the sparkfun route then ditched it after they saw how I could show up with at DataQ and get a graph and calibrate in real time.
Edward
Alpha, we recently began coordinating with USC on this, and hopefully, after these initial tests, we will have access to some of their hardware and base our set-up on theirs. I have no doubt that Dataq is better, but the marginally better performance doesn't outweigh the cost or the time it will take to get it up and running. We hope to test on the 2nd of April, so we simply didn't have the time to become acquainted with a different system by then. Which university were you working with?
-Jack