All I see is a huge VM that has been the dream of "cross platform" for the last X years. From experience all it means is that you will end up having multiple Java VM's on your machine to support the differing versions of applications. It is just like .Net, but worse because they have been doing it longer. Also now Oracle effectively owns Java it's future is far from certain IMHO. Surely it would have made more sense to build a plug-in to Eclipse if they wanted to go down this route? Hopefully there will still be a command line tool set. I would even learn Linux if I had to... Alan Melia w: www.melmac.co.uk -----Original Message----- From: Bento, Joseph (Electronic Communications Tech) [mailto:JBento@rideuta.com]=20 Sent: 28 October 2010 14:43 To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. Subject: RE: [PIC] MPLAB 8.60 -----Original Message----- From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of jim@jpes.com Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 7:38 AM To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. Subject: RE: [PIC] MPLAB 8.60 All, At the risk of sounding naive, what is MPLAB X? =20 And what makes it so different from MPLAB as we know it now? Just curius. Regards, Jim MPLAB X is Java-based, and cross platform compatible. It will therefore ru= n natively on Windows, OSX, Linux, etc. See http://devupdates.microchip.com/mplab/ Joe --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .