Hello,
Important pros of the picaxe concept (and its creator):
1) New PICs introduced get very soon turned into new powerful PICAXE versions (rough statistics say about approx 8-9 months), so you get the new technology very fast. Furthermore I have the impression that all PIC functional modules are supported very well. The I2C implementation is the highest level implementation that I have come to see around on a microcontroller, hiding a lot of unnecessary details about the protocol.
2) The PICAXE allows a lot of experimenting "under the hood" by poking SFR registers (clock speed, I/O direction, internal pull-up use, timers etc.). I do not know to which extent the Stamps allow this.
3) I have the impression that you can actually have influence over the PICAXE spec. For example, I have the impression that a discussion on power use of a 08M in sleep mode (<A href='http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/forum/Topic.asp?topic_id=3484&forum_id=19&Topic_Title=Power%2BConsumption&forum_title=No+new+posts+please%21+13 ' Target=_Blank>External Web Link</a> ) has resulted in actual implementation of my proposal to be able to completely disable the brown-out functionality (DISABLEBOD, but maybe I have a grotesque idea of my contribution here #(;o)
4) Low-power apps (microWatt range) are definitely possible (by using 2V or lower and slow 32KHz clocking), allowing a whole range of apps that are simply impossible with a stamp)
As said before, the price allows to investigate yourself without much risk
Regards, and welcome to the community
/Jurjen
http://www.kranenborg.org/ee/picaxe
Edited by - kranenborg on 11/05/2007 13:03:17