AFAIK, ngen turns MSIL into native code (also reffered to as pre-JIT), however I never payed too much attention at it's startup performance impact. Ngen'd applications still require the .NET base class libraries (the runtime).
Since the base class libraries have everything our .NET assemblies need (correct?) would it be possible to ship the framework's DLLs with my ngen'd application so that it does not require the runtime to be installed? (e.g., the scenario for most Windows XP machines)
Oh, and please don't bother mentioning Remotesoft's Salamander Linker or Xenocode's Postbuild. They are not for my (and many's) current budget (and they seem to simply bundle the framework in a virtualized enviroinment, which means big download sizes and slow startup times I believe)
EDIT:
I know now, ngen doesn't do what I thought it did.
But is it possible to bundle the .NET files with an application, without using a VM?
Have a look at Microsoft .NET Native:
.NET Native compiles C# to native machine code that performs like C++. You will continue to benefit from the productivity and familiarity of the .NET Framework with the great performance of native code.