Ahh Bill, you raise another good point...free demo compilers, eh?
How about a totally free compiler and development environment for spin and assembly? Spin for higher level stuff you don't want to mess with, and assembly for the time sensitive stuff...and you can keep it without paying! whoa..nice.
you said "Besides that propeller demo you still have to wire up all sorts of parts IE triac, zero crossing detector and such."
With the propeller prototype board, you don't have to add any of these things, like I said the board is ready to go when you get it. You may have to add these things to add peripherals, like a light dimmer, but you would also need that on the pic...I guess I don't see your point.
I would be willing to bet if we both started from scratch, I could make a wireless light dimmer using parallax cheaper than you could with a PIC...the only difference being that mine would be able to deliver a beer to you straight from the fridge in addition to being able to set the mood lighting (Labatts eh?)