Though I am happy to see a version of cl is free (rather than having to buy VisualC++), a question must be raised as to whether you want dependancies on the .NET runtime and libraries. Kinda bad tradeoff for a free compiler if you ask me. I would like to see CPAN modules that could be built using MINGW on Windows, myself. That's free -- as in speech AND beer. Alas, they don't do it that way...always using cl.

Assuming you are using an ActiveState version of Perl, it's usually better to see if there is a precompiled version by running "ppm". Unfortunately, ActiveState's ppm archive is only a small portion of CPAN (and many pieces are stale), and a lot of good modules still need to be hand-compiled.

I have also heard Expect _is_ a no-go on Windows. I can't confirm it.