But I will be using 2051's less and less. Once you pony up the $500 for the PDS900 ICE from Acqura (have I mentioned how brilliant I think this ICE is?), then you can pick just about any LPC9xx part you want. The great thing about the LPC parts is all the fantastic peripherals plus you get the reset/xtal/wdt/etc and the great in-circuit/in-systems/in-application programming capability. Sure the 2051 is flash, but it's a pain to make it in-circuit (re-)programmable. Then you need the xtal and reset circuits. The 2051 was great in maybe 1998.

Regarding the price... I'm just about to give up on the "get the cheapest micro you can" approach. We do everything from custom low-volume to OEM high volume and on almost every product where I've managed to save a few pennies by going with a cheaper/smaller micro (and having to spend more time squeezing stuff in or bit-banging this and that), I've discovered that hardware or marketing people manage to blow the wad some other way. I've even had to code stuff using mental Tawian rip-offs of [stupid] PIC micros. No more.

My $0.02
GB