I like the tiny11's myself, unfortunately they've been discontinued, they didn't have a lot of features but they were only 50 cents. I miss them terribly, I still have a few from my last Digikey purchase, they make great LED blinkers. The Tiny25/45/85 (different memory sizes) are my next favorite, massive features in an 8pin package. The tiny15's are nice for switch mode or motor drive applications because it has a PLL module which allows a PWM out of up to 100khz at 8 bit. For a few extra pins the tiny26/46/86's are nice, for real projects the Mega series has everything including the kitchen sink built in.
I prefer AVRs over PICs, for many reasons, mainly it's because AVR's are newer than PIC's the feature set is much more standardized across the entire line of products so it's much easier to 'change gears' than it is with a PIC. Even the tiny11 has the same core features as the Mega series. The same can not be said for PIC's where moving from say the 12 series to the 18 series is basically re-learning the whole chip from scratch.