Roughly, what percentage of "normal" users have .NET 3.5 installed?

Question

When programming a new application, one of the first choices is deciding what .NET framework to target.

What portion of average folks have .NET 3.5 installed. Stated more precisely, roughly what percentage of all computer users (or North American users if that is more readily available) currently have .NET 3.5 installed. An accuracy of +/- 10% is fine.

For this purpose, stats collected on programming web sites aren't so good since that's weighted too heavily towards techies.

I'm aware of stats like: "a gagillion people have downloaded .NET X", but the only thing my clients care about is "X out of 10" typical users already have the required framework installed and what is X?

I'm hoping this counts as a programming question, since the answer seems pretty critical to developing a succesfull application.

Answer 1

Duplicate question.

Answer 2

Not sure about the nature of your app and the end user's ability to install .NET, but how many will decline installing a newer/differnt version? Different versions of .net can be on the same computer. You should decide which one can you build the best application based on your abiliity to program for different versions.

Answer 3

Why not just include a version of .NET 3.5 with your application?

Here are some links that may help you, as it will be hard to determine the answer unless you can ask someone that works with a large number in your target market.

You may want to look at these two links: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.754373.7

This one has a graph that may be of use: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/933755/what-are-the-installed-base-percentages-for-the-various-net-framework-versions

Answer 4

Why don't you try including a .NET version check in your application? If they don't have the version they require you can just notify the user and provide a link for them to download/install it.

Answer 5

While I couldn't find a reasonable estimate searching the 'net I would imagine it would be quite high for home users but less for business users (due to corporate roll out schedules). But of course "quite high" isn't a useful percentage :-)

The Framework has been on Windows Update for quite some time.

It really depends on your (expected) user base and what connectivity they currently have. If they are mostly current customers then you might be able to detect the Framework version via their browser's User-Agent header when/if they visit your site.

Personally, all of my development is for 3.5 SP1 and if I encounter a desktop user with only an earlier version then the installer just downloads the update. I don't keep any statistics on aborted installations, but that's on my to-do list.

Answer 6

Is your target customer "any computer in North America" ? There is a huge difference in the profile of

• techie users (will have 3.5 running in Win98 if it has to)
• normal household users (will have whatever the OS installs and will likely allow whatever your installer adds)
• technology adverse users ('grandma', will not install anything)
• corporate users (will have whatever the corporate policy allows)

So, who is your target? IF you target a corporate market, then you should see what are the policies among your possible customers, not among every computer in North America. If you target every computer in North America then you should probably look at Silverligh, not .net 3.5.

Also, when will you ship? Is the figure of 3.5 pre-installs relevant now or then? Windows 7 and Windows 2008 come with 3.5 pre-installed and everyone expects a lot of Windows 7 deployments to replace Vista (understandably...).

And ultimately, what impact will using .net 2.0 have on your app? Negligible? 100% push back of the ship date?

To make a long rant short, you should just develop in 3.5 if you think is worth it and add the dependency to the installer.

Answer 7

Roughly 3 out of 4 users have, at least, .NET 3.0 installed.

http://www.statowl.com/microsoft_dotnet.php