I wish that Microsoft would include a decent C compiler

Yes, that would be good. In the meantime, with ActivePerl, running ppm install MinGW is a fairly painless way of getting that "decent C compiler" (in the form of the MinGW port of gcc, and dmake). And, of course, you can always opt for Strawberry Perl which includes the MinGW port of gcc and dmake as part of the distribution.

Cheers,
Rob