Hi Ed.

You'd gladly shell out the shekels for something like Sheriden Widgets - a set of ActiveX classes that might implement some of the functionality that you'd need for the app, which would save you the time and effort of implementing your own solution. What's the difference between buying a component, and buying the source to the component along with a cogent explanation of how it functions - it seems a poor judgement at best to buy a component on a maybe vs a book which proviodes you with both the source and concept behind it!

My sentiments exactly < s >. Of course, if one is a consultant billing by the hour, perhaps one would like the task to take as long as possible to increase revenue. However, IMHO, this is not very ethical behavior. If the $50 for the book reduces deveopment time from 2 weeks to 2 hours, then it seems perfectly justified to me to build the $50 for the book into the invoice.

Of course, I could be wrong....