>not enough to drop $40 for a book to explain them... picked them up wo/ any problems.

...assuming that VFP books are command + syntax and feature driven. Most are far more than that, of course. The things that have changed since VFP 3 include the vision of OOP usage with the product, much better support for OLE Controls (and JVP's book has one of the best classes for Treeview, whose support is new), and of course the whole enterprise and C/S integration is very important too. Then there's the web...

Moreover a book that should have had a 5 version that didn't was the Hacker's Guide, which is an example of a quintessential command + syntax type book that we can all agree would have benefitted us all.

Forty bucks is below quibbling, in my opinion. A book can explain an angle that may take three days to slowly dawn if one is learning poking around. I think if we were to do a survey of the speakers at devcon their personal technical book and supporting material budget is probably several times forty bucks every week...