I recently bought a DS-750 kit for doing development work on the Philips
    87C750 microcontroller. The only thing is, the EPROM version of these
    chips cost about $15 each which seems a bit expensive compared to the
    PIC chips.  Are the 8051 controllers more powerful than the PIC's?

If the $15 prices is for the windowed EPROM version of the chip, then
it is comparable to the PICs (the low priced versions are not windowed.)

THe 8051 familly is at LEAST broader and more widely sourced than the PIC.
You can get 8051 controllers capable of addressing 64k each of program and
data memory (both 8bits wide) with A-D converters and 84 pin packages from
both Intel and Phillips.  Whether the "small" 8051s are as useful as a
small PIC, and whether a broader line makes the 8051 more "powerful" are
pretty meaningless questions that are probably pointless to debate.  I
believe that a PIC has a faster "minimum instruction cycle" than most
8051s - another meaningless metric.


    Also, has anyone some idea as to the cheapest, yet effective way to get
    into PIC development? How much is the PICstart kit these days?

The Picstart kit is $180 from digi-key these days.  I think parallax still
has their cheaper programmer/downloader ($99?)

Without low volume distributers like parallax and digikey, the 8051 series
of "tiny" processors is unlikely to create nearly as much interest as the
PIC has in the last few years...

BillW