vb is cool easy to learn to make very usefull programs and its very popular so there is alot of tutorials and source code around . the draw backs that i see are that its fairly slow and the runtimes and its o/s specific. which brings me to my point , ive just started to learn python(named for monty python hehehe) very usefull open source multi o/s language . check it out at www.python.org and support these people.... i have.