>My current client is seriously thinking of porting his commercial VFP app to Delphi because of the speed of instantiation of the forms ie VFP is too slow on many of the PCs being used Pentiums with 64MB RAM.
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>He accepts that VFP data engine is fast - but this app is not partic data intensive.
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>Has anyone had any experience of how much faster Delphi form instantiation is than VFP - and what the disadvantages of Delphi are. (Apart from fact that I am a complete novice with Delphi !)

If the app is not particularly data intensive, and form speed is an issue, has the client considered VB? I think your transistion from VFP to VB would be easier than VFP to Delphi.

Also, there are some things you can do to speed VFP from instantiation: use views with the NODATA option, don't load object on other pages of the page frame until they are activated, etc.