>I haven't done enough VB to say one way or the other. The arguement the Fox team has given is that it will reduce performance and cause loss of PEMs.

I don't know what to say about the loss of PEMs statement. Maybe you could get them to explain why. FWIW, both VB and VFP forms are "real windows". Yet VFP's have twice as many PEMs as VB's. Why is that the case? I'd always assumed that it was caused by the way the development teams implemented their WNDCLASS structures for the forms.