Windows has depended on COM interoperation for a long while. In fact, most code in the Windows environment is knee-deep in COM. However, if .NET has any chance of suceeding it will have to support COM. And it does, both as a .NET client using a COM server and vice versa.

From what I've read, COM was a good technology but the problem is there is no standard implementation across applications. For example, strings in C++ are not handled in the same way as those in VB. So, passing a string from a COM server written in VB to a COM client written in C++ requires work to iron out the differences. .NET will abstract away these kinds of problems.

Charlie