>>You make a good point - which serves to support my point that it is nonsense to say that VFP is the fastest thing out there when it comes to local data and strings.
Are people who say that talking about fat client apps?
If so, my experience is that I have no customers ready to deploy dotNET to the client. Perhaps people who make the claims you mention are not writing a book or trying to teach, but are simply describing reality as they see it.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
