I am also an unashamed Active State user. If you use their PPM (Perl Package Manager) for module installation, it is very easy.

Active State does a lot of work on the "look and feel" for the graphical (GUI) modules like Tk. It will look to the user like a native Windows application (that it is a Perl application is almost unnoticeable). I have never used Strawberry for a serious project before so I cannot comment on how well or not well that they have done on that part, but I can say that Active State does very well.

Some of the Active State utilities have no counterpart of which I am aware on Strawberry or other Perl distributions. For example, I wanted to add a developer to one of my freeware projects, I sent him what Active State calls a "profile" which is an XML file and he runs it (this does take awhile) but, bingo he has now "cloned" my system with every module that I have.

I do have a license for the Active State Perl Development Kit and this thing makes deploying .exe files much easier than with Strawberry. But you have to pay for this.

Overall, I have not seen any advantage to go with Strawberry.