dragon4spy, .NET Framework is virtual machine, which is, you can consider as, small Operating System running on real OS for specific languages.
Its not MSs thing. Its computer science product highly relating to software engineering.
Current trend of software technology comes out of memory / speed limitation that has been biggest limitation of software developement, and goes for more durable and stable software developement even though there are many overheads.
Current software trend goes for OOP with Virtual machine.
Gasling who is the father of Java started this trend and Microsoft re-ensure the trend releasing .NET OOP with virtual machine(.NET framework).
However you dont need to hope window 98 goes away.
All software technology are specialized to specific area.
Still VB6 or C++ should be first choice when it goes to distributed or anonymous client applications.
But, .NET is the first choise now for the server side application developement that supports those clients.
For example, Im creating a system. Clients are old computers and spreaded to the whole nation. So I choosed VB6 for the clients app. But, on Serverside.. Im using C#.NET. since I can install .NET Framework on the Server easily that is on my department office.
Dont think .NET covers all the cases of Software development.
Its just the one of the software developement tools that cover one part of our needs.
I hope this helps..
For vb6 runtimes, 1mb of downloading and 2mb of installing!