I don't think that it will bring a tremendous new surge of interest in Perl from the Windows community, but it is necessary to maintain the current level of interest given the weight Microsoft is throwing behind its .NET initiative.

The Microsoft world is not friendly to those who don't jump on Redmond's various bandwagons.

I do hope that if .NET can truly create the language independence that Microsoft thinks the world craves, many VB programmers will slowly come to realize that Perl is easier, more intuitive, and a heck of alot more fun than VB ever was or ever will be.

Massive conversion would be unlikely, in my opinion, given that Microsoft will never have control (i.e., make massive profits from or be able to appropriate) the Perl community and will continue to strongly promote VB amongst its devotees, but wouldn't it be wonderful :-)