User advantage for .NET 3.5 over .NET 3.0

Question

I've seen many questions on SO about .NET 3.5 advantages, but these are more leaned towards language features and easier development. Are there any non-developer-wise advantages for using .NET 3.5? Bugs, fixes, advantages over time?

Background:

1. Desktop application that works in conjuction with a device driver.
2. We wanted to support as much configurations as possible, we settled for .NET 3.0. All of the functionality we really need is in .NET 3.0
3. But I so want to use LINQ and all the other new framework features. These don't help the users one bit, though.

Answer 1

NetFx v3.5 includes updates for those two existing frameworks. However, those updates are not a whole bunch of new features or changes, but in reality a service pack with predominantly bug fixes and perf improvements. So to revisit the terminology: Fx 3.5 includes v2.0 SP1 and v3.0 SP1. Like with all service packs, there should be nothing in there that could break your application. Having said that, if a bug is fixed in the SP and your code was taking advantage of that bug, then your code will break of course. To be absolutely clear, this is an in-place upgrade to v2 and v3, not a side-by-side story at the framework/clr level.

Answer 2

These don't help the users one bit, though.

Making programmers more productive and effective (which LINQ certainly can) does help users. By reducing development time¹ customers get solutions faster.

---

¹ Alternately increase scope or quality --- reducing cost of current quality and scope allows any one or two of the three factors (time, cost, quality) to be adjusted.

Answer 3

A link I found in wikipedia lists a few nice features: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/07/27/what-s-new-in-wpf-3-5-here-s-fifteen-cool-features.aspx