Should I use registry or a flat file to save a program's state?

Question

We have a lot of products that are saving their "states" on the registry.

What is the best practice on saving program states? What are the advantages/disadvantages of saving program states as a registry entry or saving program states to a flat file such as XML?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The obvious awswer would be that storing those states in a normal file, makes it easier for users to backup/restore the state manually.