>But, I'd argue the concept is the same. A tool tip is used for times when the on-screen cue has been abbreviated. Either as a picture or a short caption. For example if I have a column header that would 3 or 4 words to describe what the column is and the column data is boolean. I--and users, in my experience--think it's not advantageous to use so much real-estate.

I don't actually mind tooltips on screen myself so much, but we had one or two really vocal critics in our department, and I can pick better battles to fight :)

I agree, having, e.g., 'International System Code' in a 1-char column makes little sense :) I didn't mention that the route we agreed on is to use the message in statusbar (activex) in the Mousemove to display longer descriptions...everyone is fairly happy with that...