>The "safe select" approach will bog down - twice - as more records meet the user's criteria.
>
>IMHO, if you have so many records in the grid that it "bogs down" then you really should re-think your UI design.
>
>Presenting the end user with 30,000 customers and saying "Pick one" is user hostile (to say the least)

Unlike most programmers I let the user control what the user queries. The can query from 1 to 30,000. If they do that it would be user hostile for me to double the time required.