Surutsu,System.Random is no congruential RNG, but is using an algorithm by Knuth known as ran3 in Numerical Recipes. I would still recommend to replace it with Mersenne Twister as you have already suggested.

Better TZ support seems to be on most people's wishlist. Have you checked the J# java.util implementation (vjslib.dll)?

Is anyone using VSTO or ManagedXLL? Any experiences to share?I would like to set up a prototype using .NET and Excel 2002 and re-use our existing libraries.

If you want to install Linux and Windows XP/NT on a box it can be a REAL pain if Windows is installed first.Download the ISO image for the Knoppix distribution. You can run it without installation on any recent hardware (be sure to have enough RAMs).