Charles, please forgive me for pressing. I've got a Philosophy class this semester and I guess I'm trying to frame your comment into premises and conclusion.

I certainly wouldn't argue that the 18F' parts have "more" of just about everything (flash, RAM, clock speed, peripherals, etc.). I'm just not sure how you would quantify "in many cases", and, unless PBP is missing capabilities or features for 16F targets compared to 18F targets, I'm not sure how writing programs might be "easier" for one or the other. I've got LONG data types for 12F, 16F, and 18F targets with the BoostC compiler I'm using. Is that not the case with PBP?