I'm sure if you look hard enough, you could find some advantage of using
named pipes. But that's really pointless. As you said, named pipes are kind
of legacy, and TCP sockets are the way.

SQL Books Online doesn't seem to be quite up to date on this topic. For
instance, it stats that, "Generally, TCP/IP is preferred in a slow LAN, WAN,
or dial-up network, whereas named pipes can be a better choice when network
speed is not the issue, as it offers more functionality, ease of use, and
configuration options." I'm curious as to why named pipes offer more
configuration options. It seems to me that TCP is much more configurable.

Linchi