ASP is better then ASP.NET

I'd have to agree with you on that one michael. ASP is basically linear programming. It's a mindset change to go to OO. I saw a lot of people move from C to C++ who basically never used the capabilities of C++. They just kept coding in C, but in a different environment.

I do the hardcore stuff in C#, but the quick & dirties are still vb.

One of the things I really like about asp.net is the ability to build user controls. Watched one of the vb.net movies tonight at msdn and built an ftp control. Instead of using the slower http protocol for up/downloads, I now have a control that uses the much faster ftp protocol that I can include in any project.

But rather than argue the relative merits of asp vs asp.net, try it out for yourself. pmormr posted a link to michaels site for getting a free copy from MS. The freebie is sent to US/Canadian address only though.
Link at: http://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=10 531

Other performance tools also help you improve execution times of your programs, these include:

Pre-compiled code. ASP is not compiled. It is interpretted every time you request the page. In ASP.NET the first time the program is run the JIT (Just In Time) compiler will compile the program. After that when the program is executed is will run the compiled version which is a lot faster will be executed instead. (It will also be compiled by JIT if the original source has been modified since it was last compiled).

Caching services. Every time you request a ASP page all elements are processed again even if they havent changed. With ASP.NET you can use things like Data Caching to speed up execution. Say you had an application that listed all employees in a table (datagrid), this data will rarely change so there is no need to connect to the database server everytime and ask for a list of employees. data caching works similar to this:

1. Your code checks if the employees data has already been cached.
2. If the employees data has not been cached you request the data from your database then cache it using a method similar to Session(). You can also set a time for it to expire.
3. If the employees data has already been cached you can load all the data direct from the memory - saving a trip to the database.
4. Display either the cached DataSet (similar in some ways to a recordset) or the DataSet direct from the sever in your table (datagrid).

Also ASP.NET speeds up development time LOADS.

I remember the days when I had to Response.Write() table's, columns and rows. Now all I do is drag and drop a datagrid, change the style and headers and write some simle logic that fills the datagrid with my data.

You really cannot compare ASP and ASP.NET IMHO