Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> I've been trying to find any information at
> www.microchip.com regarding this old issue
> about "Development" vs. "Production" grade
> programmers, but havn't been able to find
> anything (yet).
>
> Now, if anyone have some pointer to some
> official information on this issue I'd be
> very glad.

Me too. :-)

It may be safe to say that when you go to Microchip Direct->Dev 
Tools->Programmers, you are looking at "production grade" programmers. 
Everything else -- debuggers, "getting started" programmers -- are 
"development grade".

> Or, some information stating that this
> issue is a non-issue today would be
> equally helpfull... :-)

I doubt we will see a popular "all-in-one" programmer anytime soon.

Production programmers need to be able to do certain things that 
significantly increase the cost. For example, count how many of the features 
of ProProg you won't use for development:

http://www.embedinc.com/proprog/index.htm

How often do you need to verify program memory at Vdd limits? Some of the 
higher end programmers are also designed with code security in mind (see 
SoftLog products for example).

Conversely, there are some things you need in a development programmer, like 
debugging capabilities, that you don't need in a production programmer.

Engineering is all about tradeoffs. :-)

Vitaliy 

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