Windows Phone Thoughts: Getting .NET Compact Framework on Device Is A Pain!

"I was just going off about this on twitter and I felt it was worth posting about too. I downloaded the beta for FourSquare on Windows Mobile. However, the application requires .Net Compact Framework 3.5 on the device. At first, I figured that a new HTC HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5 should already have the 2 year old version of the Compact Framework installed in the ROM. Guess what I found out - No .NetCF 3.5 on the device. While that's just short sighted and stupid on Microsoft's part, the solution is pretty simple. All I need to do is download the CAB from the web and I'm good to go. Sadly, it's just not that simple. You see, the .NetCF 3.5 installer is a 33MB desktop installer that contains the CAB files inside of it. So you can't simply download it to your device and install. Now I'm really wondering what the hell Microsoft is thinking. Have they lost sight of the end user in all this?"

Thoughts Emeritus Mike Temporale has a good point about the .NET Compact Framework that you may be wanting to install (in order to run other programs). I found out the same thing Mike did last summer when I wanted to install an app and had to hook my phone up to my computer, download the framework, and install it, all while having the CAB for the actual program sitting on my phone waiting. It used to be (e.g., 2003) that only expert geeks knew about CAB installations to their phones, of course that was also when every device shipped with a cradle and it was expected that the device would be docked a considerable amount of the time. Nowadays docking is mostly an annoyance, and the lack of a CAB for the .NET CF is annoying.

Of course come to think of it, I've never had a good time installing ANYTHING .NET... so why should the CF be an exception? <sigh>