I just wanted to put a post in here because I get occasional emails / blog responses regarding this question.

If you uninstall RD Tabs, you will NOT lose your settings. Your settings will persist in your Local Settings\Application Data folder in your user profile under the folder Avian Waves. Then, when you reinstall the same version or newer, it will pull your latest settings from that folder, so you will lose nothing - not settings or favorites!

If you reinstall an older version, it will attempt to pull settings previously stored by that version or even older. If you never had settings for the older version, it will create a blank settings file and you will start from scratch. That is the only instance you will "lose" settings. And, actually, they are not lost, just inaccessible to the old version. If you reinstall a newer version, it will find the settings again. This is by design! The newer versions will have a newer schema that the older versions may not understand, which could cause the application to crash.

I hope this clears up some concerns regarding RD Tabs settings!

Thank Microsoft's Visual Studio Team for making the My.Settings API in VB.Net so powerful and versatile! It's what handles all of this automatically.