"ActiveState on Win32" made "the installation location independent, that is, you can install it anywhere on your hard disk."

Not quite. PPM (among others?) will fail unless you fix the paths in Config.pm. At least, that's the case for ActivePerl 5.6.1 (build 633, IIRC)

Update: Oops, misread, yes, it can be installed anywhere. You can even move it after it's been installed if you update the paths in Config.pm (simple search and replace), and you fix the .pl file association (if you have one).