title: .NET 3.5 Redistributable -- 200 MB? Other options?
body: <p>I've been using a lot of new .NET 3.5 features in the work that I've been doing, lately. The application that I'm building is intended for distribution among consumers who will probably not have the latest version (or perhaps <em>any version</em>) of the .NET framework on their machines.</p>
  
  <p>I went to go <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&amp;displaylang=en" rel="noreferrer">download the .NET 3.5 redistributable package</a> only to find out that it's almost <strong><em>200 MB!</em></strong> This is unacceptable for my application, because it's supposed to be a quick and painless consumer application that installs quickly and keeps a low profile on the user's machine. For users that have .NET 3.5 already installed, our binary downloads have been instantaneous, so far. This 200 MB gorilla will more than quadruple the size of the download. Is there any other option than this redistributable package that I can use to make sure the framework is on the machine that won't take the user out of our "quick and painless" workflow? Our target time from beginning of download to finalizing the install is less than two minutes. Is it just not possible for someone who doesn't already have .NET installed?</p>