>>So do they have to put up with "regular internet speed" or do you have some special 'pipe' to assure fast throughput?
>
>We were able to work with our IT dept to speed up and stablize the internet connection. During the 6-8 months of development of the web app, I was able to meet with them several times to upgrade the connection. At first this meant software updates to the proxy server and other compnonents to stabilize them. They also changed a the routing of our depts internet to work with an experimental, faster connection. Then eventually they upgraded the entire regions internet connection to a really fast pipe that was far faster and more stable. In fact I think they used use as an excuse to do a customer-driven upgrade on the internet connection. It certainly isn't as fast as my DSL connection at home, but plenty fast. We used to have many internet connections for each work site, but they upgraded to one really fast one for our entire region. Probably one of the biggest internet pipes in town. But certainly, a fast and stable internet connection is required.
>
>There was a lot of skepticism in our dept that converting our application to the web would be a bad thing, but we really needed to do it because our dept like many was changing from a small dept at one site to a dept that spanned a large geographical region. The main concerns were:
>- it would be slower
>- less stable
>- difficult to use
>
>I addressed or had these addressed in the following ways:
>- I optimized the reports and the ASP pages so that they would load run faster the Windows app. The reports were easier since a weak P3 on someones desktop would run a report over a slowish LAN a lot slower than the same report on a two CPU fast server accessing local data. Optimizing the ASP.NET pages was done with some tricks that would load pages in the background.
>- the app became more stable that than the local app since the internet connection was upgraded and was more stable than our Novell Shares. To this day the internet connection dies less than our Novell servers
>- took pains to make the app look and feel like a Windows app which meant it was as easy to use at the old app. My apps always have simple UI's so this was possible. I find very few users can understand complex UI's.
>
>Things have worked out and I've won people over. In fact other depts in other parts of the province now use our application. We never approached them, they came to us. We even get enquires from other provinces. Not tooting my on horn, but I just think that there are a lot of bad web apps out there. When one is made properly, the word spreads.

Thanks for the details (including the extensive reply to DmirtyL).

Well done! Clearly I'm working with a less-than-adequately-designed web app. day-to-day :(