Originally Posted by BrianBSL

You can grab the student edition from Microchip's website, otherwise you would have to buy it from them. I'm not sure if the FIRST one is limited - I've always programmed my PIC's in assembly except for FIRST stuff.

I'm pretty sure the 18F8520 is only avilable in surface mount form, but the 18F4620 is avilable in 40-pin DIP package, and includes twice the RAM as the 8520 as well (which seems to be a complaint about the RC).