AVR-Chat

hi all,

foa, newbie here, so pls go easy, if you could ;-)
i'm looking at building a weather station. google tells me there are a 
few out there based on PIC. someone suggested AVR atmega169 but i'm put 
off by its mlf packaging.
i'll need adc, lcd, push buttons, ram/flash to store data history, 
serial to PC later. it looks like pic16f877 should be the trick for me 
but i figure i should give avr a chance. so i'm here looking at the 
whys/why-nots of using AVR to build my weather station.
ok. flame away.

cheers
-ls kong