Cobi,
I purchased both of these back in the day for the same reason you mentioned. (Reliability.)
I recommend the PICKit2 Starter Kit. It has the Low Pin Count Demo board which will also give you the ability to easily program your own mods. (Not that it would be hard to make something like that from scratch.)
If you find that you would rather have the PICKit 44-pin demo board let me know and I'll send you mine for free.
...as I never use it.
With that said I now agree with 3D0 that the clones are usually just as good as the original. In fact I just purchased some clones because I didn't want to pay full price.
Let me know if you want that demo board.