>>And what if .NET turns out to be a wild goose chase? Sometimes it's better to get off the train for awhile and get on again at a later station. (maybe even the same train)
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>In high tech waiting is not generally an option. If the CLR/.NET is a wild goose chase it will have wasted Microsoft's time more than our time.

No, it will waste our time much more. Microsoft might be able to recover from a dead-end product (can anybody say "Bob"?), but we, as developers, may not. If it takes away from our productivity to produce apps that nobody wants or can use, how could that possibly be better for us? We're still able to produce useful applications with today's tools (which are here) and possibly may not be able to with their "vaporware". I'm just not that comfortable being that much on the bleeding edge...