Agreed!

It seems that the intention of MS to support all the products out on the market was too poorly conceived. I think that the .NET team under estimated the sheer number of devices out there and never really addressed it in 1.x. They decided to revamp it and deploy it with Whidby instead. All in all, I'de say it was a good idea to roll it out in 2.0 rather than complicate 1.x with another service pack. Now a new device is just an additional config file. and all up to the machine config... No more hassles with the actual web applications themselves (aside from developing within the confines of the compact framework anyway).

You know that wouldn't suprise me at all. Microsoft has a tendency to subcontract many of the "secondary functionality" pieces out to "experts" in the field for most of their solutions. From my own experience, it almost never works out for the best possible solution.