Thoughts on Proteus simulator

[newtekuser]

Labcenter currently runs a Black Friday deal offering 20% off and I'm tempted to pull the trigger on purchasing the VSM package for PIC24 for about $548 after discount code.
Can anyone please chime in and comment on the usefulness of the simulator, issues and what I should expect from it?
I already know the PIC24 flavors I'm targeting are supported, unfortunately none are included in the demo/trial versions so I can't evaluate them.
I would be using it to switch from PIC16 to PIC24, get into ethernet, USB, boot loaders etc and also do the development on it instead of using breadboards.
Also, what peripherals are supported?

[wraper]

AFAIK their MCU simulators were always buggy. Fun to play with but usefulness is questionable when something that works fine IRL fails in weird ways in their simulator. Last time I tried it with some ATMEGA it did some particular math operation wrong. IMHO not worth it even for free.

[newtekuser]

AFAIK their MCU simulators were always buggy. Fun to play with but usefulness is questionable when something that works fine IRL fails in weird ways in their simulator. Last time I tried it with some ATMEGA it did some particular math operation wrong. IMHO not worth it even for free.

Thank you very much for the feedback, I feared as much!

[woofy]

I don't have any VSM's, but I am a proteus user with the analogue simulation which works well enough. Personally I would not bother with the VSM's, much preferring to debug on real hardware. Your money will be better spent on a pickit4/5 which will allow you to program, debug and step through your code.

[newtekuser]

I don't have any VSM's, but I am a proteus user with the analogue simulation which works well enough. Personally I would not bother with the VSM's, much preferring to debug on real hardware. Your money will be better spent on a pickit4/5 which will allow you to program, debug and step through your code.

I do have a Pickit4, done projects with PICs already where I used the debugger albeit in limited ways since I've been using a PIC16F887 exclusively which itself is very limited. Was planning to use the VSM to learn to use a new PIC family and experiment, also while being away from home and access to HW.