I've been given a secondhand IBM ThinkPad running Windows XP Professional, and I'm getting a lot of updates for the Microsoft .Net Framework. I only use the PC for browsing with Firefox and IE 8, plus accessing my email on Yahoo. Do I need it?
Ron Shaw
Microsoft launched .Net a decade ago to provide a simpler way of creating Windows programs. Quoting Wikipedia: "The framework's Base Class Library provides a large range of features including user interface, data and data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications".
It's also through .Net that Microsoft has retrofitted Windows XP with new technologies developed for Windows Vista. This includes Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the new graphics subsystem used by, for example, Silverlight.
Although .Net doesn't appear to do anything, an increasing number of programs won't work without it.
