Whoops, one thing I forgot to ask about Visual C++ was what edition I should get. I''ve been stuck with the Visual Basic Learning Edition for a while and am somewhat disappointed with how much it doesn''t have compared to the professional edition. So is Standard Visual C++ the C++ equivalent to the VB Learning edition, or would Professional Visual C++ suit my needs? One last rant, would any other software titles such as Borland C++ Builder mentioned earlier or another have these different "editions" that I should look out for.

Whew, thanks for putting up with all my questions.

Everyone likes VC++. But from what I see people say, they like the IDE & imply they like the compiler. Personally I LOVE the IDE & it''s a pleasure to use it at work every day. The compiler is another matter. It has a tonne of MS "extensions" that make it far from ANSI compilant (does anyone else notice a non-compilance trend in M$ business tactics?) And if you turn the extensions off you basically can''t program in Win32API without tooth pulling pain. As some examples, the compiler has a little trouble with templates, doesn''t allow consts inside classes and isn''t compilant when declaring variables in a for loop statement (ie for(int i....)) I prefer gcc as a compiler, but MSVC++ as an IDE.

Just thoughts
Brad