Tim Anderson has been blogging from Tech.Ed. In a useful post about convergence between Silverlight and WPF, he makes the comment
in many ways Silverlight is .NET done right, from a client perspective; it delivers just what is necessary for a rich client
This echoes my previous remark that Silverlight 2 suggests a route to a more manageable and lightweight deployment model.
This make increasing sense. .NET has not succeeded on the client platform, largely because of the multiple monoliths of the .NET framework. Silverlight introduces a model whereby elements of .NET may be distributed in a granular fashion - surely it won’t be long before Microsoft enables this facility for installable rich clients also.