The same crippled COM object, not a .Net approach.
And the improvments are close to null... excerpts from product help:

What's new for Microsoft MapPoint 2006 developers
There are no new methods for this version of MapPoint.

The Location object supports two new properties: Latitude and Longitude. The MapStyle property now supports a road map style for low light conditions: geoMapStyleNight

More information
Location Object
MapStyle property

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS...
Renato