Can I **avoid** using MS AJAX completely while developing ASP.NET Webforms applications and use jQuery/jQuery Tools instead?

jQuery seems to be much snappier, has better community, extremely small file size (24kb). It's also seems like an obvious choice for *ASP.NET MVC* development.

But what about Webforms? I really would rather not use AJAX Tools that comes with Visual Studio 2010. **Can jQuery provide me with everything that default AJAX controls have to offer**?

Thanks!