Comment Re:There's no good option (Score 1) 128
I take issue with the 'doesn't support huge numbers of older PICs' Microchip has something on the order of 600-700 different PICs in production (and which rarely if ever get obsoleted) - looking through the latest MPLAB 8, I see a few rfPICs and some PIC18s that are not supported by ICD3. But if the part you're using isn't supported, that can be a huge issue.
I've seen quite a few issues with the boost circuit, they haven't traced back to an issue with the ICD3 itself- they were due to the resistor on the MCLR pin being too low, and dragging down VPP. The datasheets pretty universally (now) specify 10K on the MCLR pull up. The boost circuit on the ICD3 is more controllable, but not as strong as the one on the ICD2. With some of the newer parts, the ICD2 can very easily over-voltage MCLR.