>I think many of us use SET ASSERT to help debug, rather than as a mini-error handler. EVERY distributed app. should have a robust error handler to take care of the inevitable bugs, but SET ASSERT isn't the right tool for this.

I agree. You must use a more user-friendly error handler. That's why I don't think ASSERTs belong in the final app. If you're going to check for errors during development, why not when the user is running the program?