>I would really like to get a hand on COM, how does it really work and what are the benefits of using it.


Paul has recommend Don Box's books, which are considered the best on COM. However, they take a very C++ centric view. Take a look at the book Designing Component-Based Applications from Microsoft Press. It was written by Mary Krikland, who is one of the lead people on the COM team. The first part takes a language-neutral point of view, then digs into an example application using VB and VC++. It isn't difficult to translate the VB stuff to VFP.