RM>  -1 for MinGW
RM>  +1 for VC

Some here

-1 for MingGW
+1 for VC

VC has still a much better optimizer then gcc, if you use it with care
about 10% faster, which today where CPU's are not getting faster as
fast is still important.

MS it is keeping better capatibility. How many thousands of programms
were brocken by the (technically unnecessary) changes from 3.3 to 3.4.

MinGW always had problems with Windows specific new technology because
in the past - don't know how the situation is now - they were not
allowed to use the windows header files directly.

A 77MB toolchain is extremely heavy.

Then look at the update frequency of MingW and components, i can use
MSVC for years without problems, but the release-often/release-too-early
sympthom of open source is a different beast.

And finally, it is always a good decision to use the compiler from the
system vendor. Unix guys should remember this. Even if it is a totally
strange HP PA-RISC compiler. This simply gives the best compatibility.


To cut a long story short: I don't trust MinGW.


-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's