>I know you probably can't respond to this speculation but I take this as a tacit admission by Microsoft that the .NET brand name didn't make the market swoon quite as much as they had hoped. It never particularly appealed to me. (The name, that is; the technology has appealed to me from the start). I understand that Microsoft got religion about the internet, after a slightly tardy start, and everything became net this, net that. In this case I think the name was slightly misleading. There is still a need for software other than web apps. The .NET framework fully supports the development of such apps -- Windows Forms, etc. -- but you wouldn't know it from the name.

I agree with you Mike. Others here at Microsoft agree with this also. The technical features and the message around .NET development will be greatly improved upon the release of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 later this year.