>Do you mean that my current VB app will be mandatorily .NET enabled if I want to use VB7?

Yep.

>That I could no longer build a traditional WinApp w/o that .NET thing?

If you are using VB or C#, that's correct.

>No more backward compatibility?

MS had for the first time (AFAIK) decided to *not* put backward compatibility as the first criteria for the new version. This mean that your current code will most likely not run as is in VB.NET There will be a converter, but it may not be perfect.

Here is a short list of what has changed in VB.NET:
- No more Variants
- Arrays are 0-based
- Dim ... As New isn't allowed anymore
- And more...