.Net market penetration?

[milener]

THis may not be the right forum for market questions, I'm looking for
an active set of .Net / C# folks to help us locate the right
information

I'm looking for the following, :
- % of Windows clients that have .Net 1.1 or later installed as of
March 2006.
- What OS did .Net first appear in, preinstalled
- Does .Net come with IE and if so, starting at what version of IE
- If you write in .Net 1.1, will that code excute error free in 2.0,
and vice-versa, can 2.0 .Net execute in 1.1 framework (obviously
assuming you use classes that are avail in 1.1)?

If anyone can point me in the right direction to who or where to get
answers to these questions, I'd very much appreciate it!

Scott Milener
CEO
Browster, Inc.
milener (at) browster dot com

[Erik Funkenbusch]

On 12 Mar 2006 21:44:39 -0800, mi*****@browster.com wrote:

I'm looking for the following, :
- % of Windows clients that have .Net 1.1 or later installed as of
March 2006.
Unknowable.
- What OS did .Net first appear in, preinstalled
Windows Server 2003 (currently the only OS shipping with .NET)
- Does .Net come with IE and if so, starting at what version of IE
No, it doesn't.
- If you write in .Net 1.1, will that code excute error free in 2.0,
and vice-versa, can 2.0 .Net execute in 1.1 framework (obviously
assuming you use classes that are avail in 1.1)?

There are some breaking changes in 2.0 from 1.1, but not many. I've had
good success with simply recompiling under 2.0. Your milage may vary. 2.0
will not execute on 1.1 since the VM has changed (the inclusion of generics
and such, for instance).

This isn't really the right questions to be asking, though. You simply
cannot rely on .NET being installed (any version) anywhere. Years ago,
people used to ask these sorts of questions about the VB runtime, or MFC,
and it always comes down to the fact that you need to either ship the
library yourself, or instruct the user how to install it (this can be done
through Windows Update, but it is a rather large download and people on
dialup will be hesitant to do this).