Hi.

I have used both the Hi-tech and the CCS PIC C compiler, and to be honest I prefer the CCS one.

The Hi-tech one is a more ANSI-compliant compiler, to be sure, but the CCS one wins out for me because it has inbuilt support for all the hardware. You don't have to drive everything yourself, you just have a function already defined to do it. Timers, interrupts (very easy to use), Uarts, etc, all just pretty much work.

It's also cheaper.

That said, it does have it's quirks. There are oddities about including files, and if you're insistent on writing C in a traditional method, as per linux for example, you may well find it a little limited. But taken as a very high-level macroassembler with all the useful functions already defined and pretty well documented, it's very versatile. It supports pretty much all current PICs, and can be interfaced with MPLAB very easily. I've written dozens of projects with it and find it pretty easy to use.

I haven't tried the other one you mention.

pca