Sometimes the answer is right in front of you, but you can't see it. I think this is what Calvin Hsia meant when asked how they made string manipulation faster in version 8. He said they took the "slow parts out."

duh!

Now, seriously, putting the exe on the local machine will be much faster. However, it also brings another problem - updating the exe. I use a loader program that first checks to see if there is an updated version out, if so, it deletes the old one and renames the new one. It's been a very good strategy for us.

JH