>C#/VB.NET won't buy them anything more than what C/C++ now provides. The only people who seem to be chasing it are "book writers". Why bother.

Gerry;

I like your term "book writers". We have seen so much of that for about the last ten years - in all areas of computer technology. It is rare if a computer book of say 1500 pages has more than a paragraph of useful information. That paragraph IMO will pay for itself but a lot of trees had to die to produce that amount of information. There are few computer books that have true value based upon the "real world".

Tom