Actually if you go back to my very first posts on the forum, i was a big big advocate of microchip, they were superb. they have changed as a company. read back five years ago, both here and MC forum. All posts say for example MC will replace the ICD3 /2 for life as it was a pro tool, they stood by it, fast forward to maybe a year or so ago and mine that i got 14 months previously gave up on me. MC told me tough, they dont warrant it for life its 12 months and always has been (untrue).
What they didnt bother looking at was my account, because on it they had replaced 3 pk3's when they messed up with MS 64bit drivers and bricked loads of pk3's. they gave me free replacements for a while. MC just isnt the company they were, i switched to sil labs because they are the company that MC was 5 years ago, sure they will go the same way, but at the moment apart from the horrific site they have, they are excellent. they paid for my trip to Austin to go meet them, i wrote on there blog and facebook for a while with projects i did with the kits they sent me, simple silly things but they liked them, free tools as well and ARM cores, customer service like MC was. Staff on the forum and not A Hats that has always been on the MC forum.
For now sil lab cares about customers, so did MC. But honestly as much as i love the docs from MC as a company they dont fit me any more. It isnt about supporting parts, its about changing to make money instead of changing because your evolving. buying Atmel killed them as a company, same as buying up Hitech killed a decent compiler and IDE.