Should MS take a tip from AOL?

If there's one thing that frustrates programmers that develop for Windows, it's the uncertain market penetration of the .Net framework. Microsoft has done a really lousy job of managing this and communicating with the developer community.

I saw an AOL ad on TV (the one with the CD fish art is classic!), and I was wondering why MS didn't use this tactic - mass mailing .Net framework CD's.  Of course they'd have to package it with some free software to motivate people to install it, but at least it could double as a marketing campaign for the packaged software.

It's late, I'm tired and delirious, but I think this idea's got legs.  Who can I call at MS? ... Philo?

Raving Lunatic
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

I was think the same thing. Maybe they should mail out Windows XP Service Pack 2 on CD to everyone and their mother (especially their mother) and include .Net with that.

Of course that wouldn't cover Windows 98/ME/2k. But they could still allow the installation of .Net from the same CD  for those OS along with a game or something as a consolation prize.

Chris Altmann
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

I would make it a free .NET app, thus forcing the user to install the framework, instead of just using the freebie

Dan G
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

In fact, put DirectX 9 on the CD and make a short game with .NET and the .NET DX9 extensions. That would make me so happy :P

Dan G
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

two words:  .NET porn

Jay
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

>two words:  .NET porn

Hey, that's three words!

Litago
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

"Maybe they should mail out Windows XP Service Pack 2 on CD to everyone and their mother (especially their mother) and include .Net with that."

Actually XP SP2 already includes .NET. Just need to mail out the CDs now. :)

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Rory had a funny article about using WinFS for storing (and finding!) your porn...

http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/1287.aspx

Kentasy
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Just started a new company with a product that competes with the companies I've worked with over the past 7 years.

The field has gotten rather stagnant over the last little while, and as we're starting from scratch, we've decided to do it in .NET (most of my past experience has been in C++).

We'll be mixing MC++.NET and C# code.  With our competitors already slinging around 20-30MB downloads just for their C++ products (my guess is due to code bloat, most of our competitors are on 10-20 year old code bases), bootstrapping a .NET installer on our download would clock in around 25MB, which is not an unreasonable size in our field.

Going .NET
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

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