Sorry to come into this late, but an engineer I know hates PICs so much, when asked by "A friend" to repair one of these he replaced the PIC with an AVR, the heathen;-) but apparently he tripled the number of operating modes.
I'm with you though, it matters what the product does, not what's inside to make it happen. My next project will be based around a smallish PIC but will sell, for circa £1000 (I hope)
Bookmarks