Greetings Karl,

A component is always code that distinguishes itself from normal code
in the way it is physically deployed (aka plumbing) and in the way it
is accessed from the outside

I guess they are reffering to "Serviced Components" (see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cp
conservicedcomponentoverview.asp)
, which are basically .NET objects taking advantages of the COM+
environment. These are usually deployed on a server ("Application
server" idiom), taking advantage of transcations, object pooling and
security.

If you want to develop a component that has primarily a visual
representation, is accessible from the outside via getters and setters
and via .NET remoting (basically RPC but more)  then take a look at the
Component and the IComponent interface
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlr
fsystemcomponentmodelcomponentclasstopic.asp).

If you consider plumbing assemblies with various functionality into an
existing application, A .NET Assembly is also a component (in the
library sense).

Greetings
Amanjit Gill