Viv,

>It's not assigning a variable - it's sending the string to the transmit buffer. I guess if you want it to go faster you need a faster baud rate...

Correct, but only to a point. Try the following:

sendstart = SECONDS()
this.mscomm1.output = SPACE(100)
buffcount  = this.mscomm1.outBufferCount
sendend = SECONDS()
outputtime = sendend-sendstart

buffcount wil always be 0. Control doesn't return to VFP until the entire output buffer is empty.