I am willing to work on a personal project that I would like to release publicly. I am working with Silverlight and have experience with XAML, as it is my full-time job.

It is enjoyably for me to create UIs in Blend and XAML. I am also a big fan of C# language. I don't know what I would do without LINQ now.

Anyways, I was looking at using WPF for my personal project. It seems that a lot of the controls out on the web are pay for items. The only place I have found to have a significant number of free controls is the WPF extended framework on codeplex.

I want to make a financial application and need a powerful datagrid type of control that will allow me to enter transaction data. I haven't found such control for free in the net. It doesn't seem like there is much free community libraries/controls out there for Microsoft products.

So, I was wondering if WPF would be the right way for me to go. I couldn't find any information on WPF usage in Windows 8, which coming very soon. I don't know Microsoft's plans for this technology.

Would it be a better idea to use something different for the UI instead of WPF?