Thanks for the video link. That's basically a summary of most of PK3 users' experience. Overall, the PK3 is kind of a hybrid of PK2 and ICD2 on hardware level, which is a good thing to have. The major cons on PK3 are: 1. A 3.3V MCU was picked, which makes it hard to interface with all 5V PICs. Please keep in mind, this is a programmer, any PIC can be connected. The 3.3V limit put the hardware designer spending more on the logic shift circuits, which makes the device cost more and got more potential to fail from system point of view. 2. For the moment, the PK3 picked the ICD2 approach on software development, which was a good choice at all. But it can be fixed and change to the way PK2 introduced, but it takes long time. The rumor may be true about PK2 got really small team on both software and hardware design as the video descriped, but the fact is, sometime, smaller team might work more efficiently on communication, brain storm/open mind to different approaches, adopting features from forum wish lists, etc. The PK2 V2.61 GUI releases got our contribution on boosting Programmer-to-GO capability from "256K bytes max" to "4M bytes max". It is just a simple example, how PK2 can be improved from different resources/contributions, even from outside of Microchip. I hope both PK2 and 3 will go well. Maybe there is a PK4 on the way if PK3 doesn't go so well. Funny N. Au Group Electronics, http://www.AuElectronics.com http://www.AuElectronics.com/products http://augroups.blogspot.com/ ________________________________ From: Mark Rages To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. ; pickit-devel@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, October 21, 2009 3:06:29 PM Subject: [PIC] eevblog reviews the PICkit 3 An excellent, entertaining review of the PICkit 3. Video, contains strong language! http://www.eevblog.com/2009/10/21/eevblog-39-pickit-3-programmerdebugger-review It would probably be a worthwhile project to port the PICkit 2 firmware to the PICkit 3. I'm not aware of anyone working on this, but I'll try it if I get a 3. Regards, Mark markrages@gmail -- Mark Rages, Engineer Midwest Telecine LLC markrages@midwesttelecine.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist