And knowlegde.. I didnt know there was something as delightfull as purebasic when i was using visualbasic. PB is all free of dependencies, runtimes etc. So its also a matter of oppinion. do you want your progams to be bloaty and need dependancies like m$ .net etc then chose something else than purebasic.
That is a programmer talking, not a consumer. Consumers don't care about .NET, dependencies, runtimes, libraries or anything else. They want it to work - they don't care about *anything* else! That is how I've gotten away with writing PDF Image Magic in .NET and providing an 8 meg trial download. 8 megs is nothing to someone that needs to batch convert images into PDFs. You'd never believe the sales figures if I told them to you!
Consequently, I just put up the new version of the web site with a command line version (under a meg - written in C++, no, not visual C++!). .NET was a bad choice for this application as it is far too simple an app to take advantage of .NET's strengths. I wrote it purely as an exercise in .NET and started selling it on a whim. It is selling so well now that I don't want to take it and re-write it in PB simply because I'm afraid to curse it!
Still, it sells extremely well and I don't think the download size is a factor for the majority. Remember that you aren't motivated by the *need* for a utility like PDFIM. People that *need* it will go to great lengths to get it. It works as soon as you fire it up - that is the most important thing.
Regardless of any of that, .NET was
not the right tool for this job, but it proves that it works nevertheless!
edit:
I downloaded the program and i admit it works rather nice

Thanks! And my point! If you needed it, you'd likely buy it, .NET and all
The strengths of .NET come with developing larger applications. Database applications full of boring business logic where you can really put to good use concepts like OOP and MVC (Model-View-Control) abstraction..
Now. Go buy kBilling and PDF Image Magic. I don't think you'd be interested in some recruiting software or I'd sell you a couple other product too (but they're written in .NET - eww!)..
*grin*