>  You have a valid point.  Yes, I guess we are paying for the
>  development software everytime we buy a PIC.  And, yes, we
>  have a right to expect the best possible software for the
>  price, whether it be an outright lump sum or distributed over
>  the course of many PIC's or many years, or whatever.  But, I
>  think that the product offered by MChip right now fills my
>  needs.  Whether or not it is the best they can offer, I don't
>  know.   Probably not.  But MChip has not only allowed, but
>  endorsed third party software development as well as hardware
>  development.  And I'm guessing at least one of the factors
>  behind such a decision is to relieve them of the burden of
>  writing development software in the first place.  So, what they
>  offer is a product that allows you to utilize their parts and
>  do development work at a mininum cost.  If you want to
>  get really serious about software development, you can go to
>  the third parties to get better development tools.  Of
>  course, that means higher cost because you now have assemblers
>  and compilers written by a company that depends on the income
>  from these packages to support them.  I guess what I'm trying
>  to say here is that from my point of view, for the price of
>  the MChip development software, it's hard to beat.  If you want
>  to spend some money, you can get better tools.  And generally,
>  the more you spend, the better the tools.   But, if you want
>  to get started, or you only have one or a few designs to do,
>  and you don't want to or can't spend a lot of money for
>  commercial quality tools, then the MChip package is the way to
>  go.  And me personally, if I had my druthers, I'd run DOS
>  based apps for my PIC development work.  They take up so little
>  space compared to windows based apps, that even a small hard
>  drive can last a long time and hold hundreds of files.  But
>  that's another story.
>

I hate to further muddy the waters here... BUT I find it hard to
critize MPLAB because it works.
I previously designed with Motorola 68HC11 micros.. getting from code
to product was about as much fun as poking yourself in the eye with a
sharp stick while having root canal work with Anne Murray records
being played in the background.
Im sure there a lots of useful functions coming up short on MPLAB
but I know I can select a PIC, code /develop it with the ICEPIC, it
will compile, it WILL program (unlike the lottery of 68hc11
development) and the project is operational.
This has been true for many development cycles now, I upgrade MPLAB
as a separate directory lest it start to function as poorly as
Win95/98 where an upgrade is really a downgrade.
The clever stuff should be in the code, not the IDE.

Just my philosophy.
Time to sit back and wait for the put downs.... go ahead... do you're
worst!


Lance Allen
Uni of Auckland
New Zealand