I feel very comfortable with these devices as they have more to offer than a PIC even if they may be slower. Much apreaciated is the interrupt structure of the MCS51 family as you could run a clock and a serial interface in software (impossible with a PIC as interrupt priorities is not implemented). This dilema is also solved by the fact that the MCS51 controllers already have a UART.
Current projects:
A CS8900A based embedded ethernet controller for my 80C32 controller board.
An 89AT8252 based MP3 player for the car part1 and part2 featuring ethernet, laptop HDD, mp3 decoder, ...
A simple IDE interface for MCS51 controllers as used in the player.
Using a T6963
based graphic LCD display.