I say: Perl is the usual language of CGI, so if you're a web developer and want to test your scripts locally before uploading them to your server you'll need a local installation, and if you're working on a windows box - this is the one. Once installed you can use it for more than just web related CGI - Perl is an incredibly powerful and versatile language.
Since earlier versions ActiveState have sorted out nearly all of the installation difficulties - with one exception... while the installer will associate .pl files with the Perl executable, you'll still have to manually set up an association for .cgi files. It would be nice if this was an option in future releases, but I can appreciate that not everyone wants to use it the way I do and ActiveState want to K.I.S.S.
They say: "ActivePerl is ActiveState's quality-assured, ready-to-install distribution of Perl, available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows. The standard ActivePerl distribution is available for free download.
ActivePerl Enterprise Edition gives organizations the peace-of-mind of a comprehensive Perl support package with quality guarantees.
ActivePerl contains: core Perl; the Perl Package Manager (PPM) for installing CPAN packages; PerlEx, the Perl performance plug-in for IIS; popular modules; and complete online help.
The Windows distribution provides additional features that helped make ActivePerl the worldwide standard for Perl on Windows."
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