What do our customers have from migrating from .Net 2.0 to .Net 3.5?

Question

Hi SOers,

I found very much about the benefits of using a newer .Net version for programmers (LINQ, WPF etc.) but I didn't find anything about the benefits for our customers.

So, I'm thinking about migrating our application (WinForms, C#, .Net2.0) from .Net2.0 to .Net3.5 and I need answers to the question: "What are the benefits for our customers?"

The biggest disadvantage is that .Net 3.5 is not running on Windows 2000 anymore. If our management insists on running on Windows 2000 the discussion is invalid.

Hope you can help me.

Regards,

Inno

Answer 1

Where's .NET 3.5, there's also .NET 3.5 SP 1 which includes, along with other things, some nice performance improvements.

Answer 2

The benefits are mainly for developers. Especially using WinForms you don't have many new great things to use, just stick to .NET 2.0. You can upgrade to VS2008 if you don't already and use all new fancy C# 3.0 features while still targeting .NET 2.0.

One good argument for users would that be Framework 3.5 SP1 has faster cold start but the user get that just by installing the SP1: no changes needed in code.

Answer 3

In short - better and cheaper product.

They don't need LINQ, but they need benefit from it - you will be able to develop faster and more reliable. They will receive faster development of new features and less bugs.

That leads to better and cheaper product.

Answer 4

In theory the benefits to your customers would be a by-product of your increased efficiency and functionality that your can produce based on the fact that your can respond to their needs with a greater agility.

The biggest thing for me was the introduction of WCF which allowed a more configurable and scaleable approach to building connected systems.