Before I go on, let me laud SILabs for providing us with the ability to use (program and debug) their chips at an affordable price.

Most ICEs (all I know) are "stand alone" and work beautifully, because the manufacturers concentrate on the business that is important, the few glitches are fixed expediently and it is a joy to work with them.

Cygnal (from where SILabs inherited) decided to make the debugger (JTAG ICE?) part of a so called IDE. The result is a most unsatisfactory product, it take MONTHS to get glitches fixed, if you have two instances running they affect each other, if you touch a key you should not touch, you have to start from scratch. To illustrate, working 10 years or so with Ceibo, I have reported 2 problems (they were fixed in one or two days) working a year or so with Cygnal/SILabs I have reported 15 things and most are still not resolved.

It would be so absolutotally lovely if SILabs would concentrate on the debugger and then, when that was glitch free, if they absolutely had to "integrate it".

Of course, I use the stuff, not because of the "IDE" which is a nest of fleas, but beacuse of the chips.

Moneywise I do not think the low price is an excuse, SILabs announced a while back they had sold 10.000 copies.

Again, as stated - a personal opinion.

Erik