1) All the other vendors have already gone flash. Not Microchip. My
       customers want to know why we cannot just reprogram (I mean everybody
       does it, right?). When I politely try to explain to them that Microchip
       chose not to go flash when they should have, they tell me : "We don't
       give a damn" This is a valid attitude.

Huh?  There's a very small subset of microcontrollers available with flash
program memory, and MANY of those carry a hefty price premium.  Looks to me
like Atmel is the only manufacturer throwing flash controllers in the
very-low-end arena, with microchip coming in second by having the 16C/F84.
What other $6 or less flash microcontrollers are YOU talking about?


    2) All the PICs out there already have ICE capability built-in on the
       silicon. Why not use it? Why make people pay $2490 + probe for an ICE
       when they can get it for $5 ? (Wait - I think I am getting it)

I don't want the pins wasted.  I thought (special) bond-out chips were
common practice for microcontroller ICE support.  It'd be cool to have the
"extra" 4 pins on a PLCC-44 be some sort of background debugger interface,
but I don't want my 18 pin controller to be a 24(?) pin controller...

BillW