If you are referring to the Junebug; it cant do as much as the PICkit 2 without some mods. But it can do from what i have seen most pics which the pickit 2 can that are not Low Voltage pics. You need to have a small mod in place to do low voltage pics; the mod is in the manual tho
Have a look at these video tutorials - very easy and informative. **broken link removed**
As mentioned above it's really presonal preference between the Pickit2 debugger and Junebug - but with either you will need to add things onto them like lcd displays etc - its really down to if you want to do that or buy one of the complete larger development/ programmer boards - all of which have some pros and cons - which others here can comment on from experience.
Don't forget you can learn to program before you buy any hardware - almost all the Microchip code and tutorials can be downloaded for free - and in Mplab there is a Simulator so you can see the code running - if you have access to Proteus VSM, say at college, then you can create and program a virtual model of the hardware from Mplab.
A lot of C compliers have free or trial versions, but many people will suggest that you might be better starting with assembler as it gives you a better insight to the Pic chips - equally many of the Pic higher functions such as USB etc need C.
thanks for your help again. I recently finished a 2 year electronics diploma, so i have done a fair bit of microcontroller programing in both assembly, c and c++. I guess one majour thing they left out was how to select hardware.. hahaha...
thanks for all your help and patients with my newb questions, i think ill end up going with the PICkit 2.