Jim,

On top of what has been said already you have very little to lose trying
..NET since the Express edition is free. There should be no concerning about
large required run times since they are most likely there already and if not
99% of users without the framework can install it quickly and easily.

To be honest (coming from a former long time Delphi developer) at this
moment in time .NET is an excellent, or should I say the best way to write
desktop applications. For someone just beginning you should have only a
short learning curve. As task become more complex you need look no farther
then these newsgroups for resources to questions which come either in the
form of expert responses or pointers to web sites which hold the key to your
issue at hand.

VB.NET or C#, that has already been hashed out high level. I like C# but my
agency settled on VB. Either one will get the common task done.

"jim" <jim (AT) home (DOT) net> wrote