The EasyPIC boards look very nice, professional, well labeled but they seem a little too large to carry in your pocket.
Personally I'm not a fan of a proprietary programmer / debugger like the EasyPIC boards contain, plus it cannot be detached from the main board when you outgrow the experimenter.
I designed my kits more along a modular basis, small, inexpensive, serviceable and it's a kit, you get to build it and that's fun IMO.
In my opinion I saw little need to add an LED or pushbutton to every port, although not as flashy a debugger (Inchworm / Junebug) can offer offer a detailed view into the microcontrollers with almost no programming effort on the users part.
My modular approach meant if you want LED displays, it's a standalone kit (Dragonfly) with it's own PIC, LCD/GLCD the Unicorn, Robotics the Mongoose, Ethernet web appliance (coming soon, a complete standalone web server)
The EasyPIC5 board looks impressive for sure, as do the many other excellent demo boards on the market.
Personally I like this style of demo board, solderless breadboards offer a lot of flexibility. Although I'd add a few more pushbuttons
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