Right. I've been chipping away at things, adding code to the mainline exe that creates folders if they don't exist, etc. with an eye towards no longer needing the install some day but I have yet to add the code to install the runtime libraries.
So short answer is yes, you still need the install although if you already have the VB runtime libraries installed and registered on a machine, the naked exe will probably work (though I've done very little testing). Something for the future.