One of the parts of my job will be helping define the message around deploying .NET Applications. One of the feedbacks that I heard loud and clear is finding the .NET Framework is challenging. So here you go a single quick url for downloading the .NET Framework - http://www.microsoft.com/net.
On the page you can see a button on the right - Install it now. This will allow you to launch the .NET Framework web installer and get the latest version, currently 3.5 SP1.
The web installer is about 2.8 MB download that will examine your system and then download the appropiate components to install. Most people think the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 231 MB which is actually the redistributable file size. However keep in mind that this package installs on XP, W2K3, Vista, W2K8 along with 32 bit, 64 bit and Itanium platforms. The last two platforms 64 bit and Itanium has to install the appropiate platform plus X86 WOW (32 bit compatibility mode). So while the package size is huge it has a lot of duplication due to carrying multiple MSI and CBS installers. So at the end of the day you end up downloading a much smaller size than the 231MB. Here are some rough numbers on platforms that I have checked.
| OS & Platform | Size |
|---|---|
| XP 32 bit | 54 MB |
| W2K3 64 bit | 99 MB |
| Vista 32 bit | 39 MB |
| Vista 64 bit | 58 MB |
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