The basic PIC microcontroller 16F84 is enough for many applications. But if you happen to be confined to its limitations like RAM and happen to spend lots of time optimizing your firmware for low memory usage it is worth going for PIC18F series. 18F series is around twice as costly as 16F. Other than cost no any disadvantages or difficulties.
I could find 18F452 in local market for 550 rupees. Use Microchip MCC18 compiler and ICProg with JDM version 2 self made programmer. Later I switched to WinPic Pro programmer that supports JDM serial programmer.
WinPic Pro is extremely faster than ICProg. Moreover you can configure WinPic pro to program any PIC MCU.
