>Who says you shouldn't use COM on a desktop app?

Not me, I don't think (I'll go back and look). But what COM would you use? I could see running my own COMs, yes, but thats about it. Are you going to force 10,000 users have the latest version of IE and Word so you can use the COM interface? I won't. Are you going to force everyone who wants to run some home software that manages school work to be running Back Office Software so your "shrink wrapped ASP/HTML" interface runs? Not me.