SharePoint 2007, .NET 2.0 and UserControls

We've been using SmartPart like functionality to load UserControls into our web parts. We are in the process of converting our code to work with SharePoint 2007 (which also includes upgrading the code to .NET 2.0 as well). As some of you might be aware, ASP.NET 2.0 makes use of an _app_bin folder to store compiled code. So I assumed (BIG MISTAKE) that's where the dlls for webparts that load user controls should go. After several days of the webpart not being able to load the user control's dll, I had someone point me to this lovely URL . As you can see, the dll's actually don't go in the _app_bin directory. They still go into the bin directory or GAC.