Brien (and Peter),

I think I've found the answer. In my original test TALK was set to OFF. When set to ON, LOCATE and SEEK yielded approximately the same. However, when set to OFF, SEEK (using the same test) was about 325% faster on a P200/MMX w/64 Mb of RAM. This was with VFP 6.0 SP3.

TALK should be set to OFF to produce valud results. Otherwise, screen I/O is factored in. Further, if one truly wishes to measure the relative speeds, SEEK should not have to continually open and close the index. In doing so, you measure file I/O as well and not the true performance of the function.