I use the PICSTART all the time and think it is fine. It doesn't "remember"
the fuse settings so you will program them incorrectly sometimes if you don't
remember to "reset" them. The tools are fine, the documentation is adequate
but poorly formatted on the disk. Once you get past that they are fine. And
since the PICSTART uses the serial port rather than the parallel port it works
on more systems (like my IBM ThinkPad laptop which parallax has said they
won't make it work on, even though it is an *IBM* PC (ISA bus even), and
that is pretty stupid on my part. (ed note, yes I think the Parallax folks
are wankers but that isn't why I don't reccomend their stuff)).

--Chuck