>The 3 are .DBF style Help, Windows Help, and HTML Help. In reading about it, all 3 appear to be either not available, not stable, or too long a learning curve. I don't have a "staff of technical writers" to handle this so it needs to be fairly straight-forward.

Ahhh, no. Check Rick Strahl's Westwind HTML Help Builder! It is straight forward and I don't think the task of building a help file could be any easier. He has version that you can try at no charge and if you decide to buy you can get rid of the nag screen.

http://www.west-wind.com