Win for simplicity, I previously researched this and after many posts the final answer was exactly the same as yours here.

Isn't it fantastic when excellent code is written in 2 lines?

-1

DNK needs downmod

Singletons are evil. Really. They cause more issues in software than any other single pattern.

Seriously, don't use them. If you really (think) you need one, make your IOC container do it for you instead.

Singletons are so not evil at all when they are implemented in this pattern. It is 100% thread safe = zero fail. I can agree with you on the IoC container and I love IoC but many times it's an order above and beyond in complexity for a required solution unless it's built into the very core of the functionality many times simple singletons make perfect since for handling various needs. This way of declaring them is fool proof.

Singletons are a nice easy pattern, that even if done correctly, can destroy code if used improperly.
The fundamental problem is when you try to unit test code that uses a singleton. One of the tenants of unit testing is code isolation.
Without spending some serious cash and buying TypeMock, you cannot isolate out a singleton (the correct word is Mock). This makes developing a test strategy VERY difficult.

Case in point, about bad singleton usage, NEVER-EVER implement your database layer (also called a repository) as a singleton. If you do, it will be impossible to isolate your database code from your business logic. This makes tests take longer to run, and you are having to test two sets of code. So if there is a failure, you can't be sure which set of code had a problem.