As I stated, I would be willing to pay a decent amount of money for
additional features. Perhaps if enough of us got together we could
come up with cash to get MELab's attention. The money would
at least partially pay for the release of a PBP Premium version.
My guess is that 20 or 25 "investors" would be more than enough.

My "wish list" would include

Procedures and Functions
String handling (Left$, Right$, Mid$, Len)
Floating point
Hardware I2C support
Possible upgrade path to bigger devices (dsPIC, 24F, 30F)

Is there anyone else out there that would be willing to invest
$1000 or more for this effort, or am I just wishful-thinking?