mister_e - Well everybody know my opinion about those JDMs and freebies... depending the price of, i would suggest at least Microchip PICKIT 2 instead.

JS- Hi Skimask,
A JDM clone fresh from eBay is all I use, It came with winPIC800 and that wouldn't work for me, I do not remember why. ICPROG does work, and I haven't had any real issues with it. It was cheap and seems reliable. It did not come with a manual, it has a jumper you have to move when you change from the 18 pin to 40 pin PICs.
JS

I'm still using my Warp13 from a few years ago, works great. I tried to talk him into getting the MeLabs programmer, doesn't want to spend a lot of money, tried to tell him that you 'get what you pay for' sort of thing, won't listen. At least I talked him into buy a fully legal version of PBP (and he doesn't remember where he got his pirated copy, what kind of crap is that?). I'll look into the PICKIT2 and ICPROG.

What was the problem, in general, with the JDM clones?