I'm not a power user of BaseCamp by any stretch, all I've really done is load maps, browse around, and transfer the maps (or segments) to my GPS. But I've used it on both a couple year old netbook (before I broke it!) and now on a 10+ year old desktop and it seems to do fine given the hardware.

That said, I'd be very hesitant to throw any existing performance issues at .NET's feet. If code is well developed, the difference between .NET and lower level languages should be negligible (.NET compiles down to native code anyway). There are even cases where the equivalent .NET code can run slightly faster on some systems. Also, I think it's accurate to say the versioning issues that do exist are dwarfed by the DLL hell days prior to its advent.

It's kind of like that old idiom, a poor workman blames his tools. So in this case, I'd encourage not blaming the framework if an app has performance issues - it lets those who are actually responsible off too easy

Finally, for anyone looking for free ways to add maps to their Garmin GPS, I would encourage you to try the combination of BaseCamp with the freely available maps above to see if the combination works well for you.

I know it was the knowledge that I could get free (and legal!) maps with relative ease that led me to get a mapping unit instead of a non-mapping one.