SNIP
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>Don't you find it strange that the VS2003 IDE has that modern look and feel (OfficeXP menus, toolbars, panes, etc.) YET you cannot create such GUIs in your own .NET Winforms application without relying on third party tools? What was the VS team thinking? That developers won't notice?

How's about this for a theory, Mike...
Needing to get as many companies/developers into .NET as possible, MS relinquished many aspects of .NET to third-parties. Those parties would have been less-than-enthusiastic to do, having seen MS deliver its own copies of valuable functionality in the past, unless thee was some certainty that they could sell the products they made.

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>For anyone following this thread, we've found a good set of third party stuff from Syncfusion. There are many 3rd party tools to choose from, but of course, you have to pay extra for something that I feel should have already been an integral part of VS.NET! I haven't tried it yet, but, the next version I think will have up-to-date controls won't it? I sure hope so.

I would have to doubt it. Looks like ActiveX was the "proving ground" for the concept third-party add-ons and now it is THE way of the business.
Personally I think third-party add-ons are nothing more than a pain-in-the-ass. More cost, more place to check for updates, dependence on multiple update/vesion sources, more components=more chance of failures, etc.

cheers

SNIP