@cartman82 absolutely do, it's just .net 4 which is still pretty good, and it's not like the underlying code matters much for a database from a user perspective, provided performance is good.
It was replaced with local db, which supposedly can be installed and deployed in line like compact, but i can't find any decent tutorials on how to deploy the db / create it programmatically. I've made a local db before, connected to it, etc but once it goes out to client machines it has to have additional install steps which i don't want the user to have to deal with.
Consider that i still know many large banks on sql 2k5 and 2k8, sql server has always stood the test of time well.
I will be abstracting the process eventually so that it will support sqlite, postgres,mysql, etc but i don't want to start with that when my initial targets will be relatively technology illiterate and won't be until much later when other options are required or even desired. Could likely even get away with just hooking into other systems so i don't need to worry about supporting silent installs.