I found an advantage to Win32::Internet over standard portable alternatives.

I had problems proxying https connections, but on Windows if I just used Win32::Internet it worked like a charm. Since I just needed a quick answer that ran on someone's desktop, I left it at that rather than worrying about SSLeay, etc (which really was not cooperating).

Never tried to track down the proxying problem since I never had to, but if someone else has I wouldn't mind knowing what the issue was...