>     7) Does it allow me to program the oscillator to any value I want so that
I
>can determine exactly what crystal I need to hit the performance exactly,
>without having to resort to having a collection of crystals to solder on (SMT
>crystals/resonators).  (This is just ONE reason why I hated the Advanced
>Transdata ICE, btw).

The only way you will be able to do this is have an external programmable
oscillator to drive the PIC. I suggest you will have to stick with changing
crystals.

apart from that, you dont really want much for nothing, do you?