Also it is supposed to provide "early-binding" (that is you code should run faster because the objects are typed).
However this is not true in VFP7 because you are allowed to store anything in such variable, e.g. the following code will not produce an error (should):

LOCAL loProgressBar as COMCTL.ProgCtrl.1
loProgressBar = 123 &&This should not be alowed if it is 'real' strong-typing

Kind Regards