>We're also a short stint into development of a new system in Winforms, Viv, do you see WPF as ready for the real world?

I'm not Viv... but I'll toss in my 2 cents anyways.

>Will it work on any XP and up computer (even if bad hardware or will it just not work)?

I haven't tested yet, but my understanding it that as long as it has a decent graphics card it should be OK.

>Also, is data access and connection to SQL the same, does it use ADO.NET?

Access is the same. Binding is different.

>In your research did you notice any feature/capability loss in WPF that exists in Winforms?

No autocomplete on Textboxes is one. <g> (Subject of this thread.)

No datagrid yet is another. I'm using the free one from xceed. But MS should be providing one soon.

But there are also a ton of gains, mostly in the graphics area.