Time to bring a little bit of sense to the discussion. The IDE is an addin that Microsoft has no hand in. Its like a new mode in EMACS. THIS DOES NOT EFFECT THE PERL LANGUAGE
I'd hazard a guess that the reason ActiveState is involved with Microsoft is that Microsoft likes to maintain some (Low though they be) standards in their products and it's better to work together than ActiveState producew something that causes Windows to Crash even more and Microsoft get the blame.
Also this should be viewed as an important Perl advancement as with the still rising popularity of Python on Win32 Perl may end up being a niche market. Without advances like this Perl will flounder
Dean