>> If power of the computer is the main concern for .NETers, computers are
>> cheap now. I can call Dell and order the biggest, the baddest, the
>> meanest machines for less then $1000.00.

People actually overestimate the power needed for .NET.

The .NET CLR has the nice advantage that it JIT-optimizes the code. In other words, when IL code gets loded and the final compilation takes place (which is when the app starts up or an assembly is loaded). The JIT compiler therefore knows the exact configuration of the machine the code is running on and can optimize the compiled version. This often makes .NET code faster than native C++.

Also, unlike in native C++, .NET code does not have the overhead of memory management, since that is taken care of by the platform, which is another reason why .NET code is often faster than C++.

The only problem currently is that often when an application starts up, the .NET runtime needs to be started and then there is the JIT overhead during startup.

In Longhorn, the CLR will always be loaded with the OS, so this part of the overhead (which is by far the bigger part) will go away. JIT compilation still takes place, but the current statement is that in the Longhorn timeframe, JIT compilation should be less overhead than loading a typical EXE header. How that will work, I honestly do not know, but this is the statement that was made public at TechEd 2004.

So overall, if you have performance problems, .NET is a pretty good option for solving those...

Markus