I must say that I do like the Atmel chips, especially the USB full speed version referring to the AT89C5131A-M. The package styles are quite robust and the datasheet even gives examples of how to wire. This guy is very easy to program just using FLIP and a standard USB cable. This MCU even utilizes a wide input voltage range. The main disadvatange is that the ram is quite small which means that if you wanted to run a GLCD that is quite large, good programming skills are a must. The other draw back is that it can only hold up to 32K of code, whereas this is sufficient in most cases, utilizing every bit of the MCU might require more along the lines of 64k. Another advantage is that you can have USB and serial peripherals hooked up to this guy which becomes a neat idea of controlling multiple pieces of hardware especially if you convert the 232 to 485. I haven't really seen any real hardware problems with these guys out in the field and they make a great beginners 8052 for learning purposes.