I tend to disagree even with those who (correctly!) argue, that you usually don't actually type very fast while coding: * Don't you communicate a lot during a development process, e.g. by email/im? I certainly do! * Don't you document your code (properly)? I certainly ... promise myself to do so all the times ;) * Don't you ever write a spec or a user story or similar 'lengthy' things during design? My main point however is that stressing typing 'speed' alone puts a to narrow perspective on typing 'skills'. The definite benefit is to be able to really touch type, i.e. type without looking at the keyboard at all. This alone let you focus on many things so more easily even when still typing pretty slow, just because the keyboard is none of your concerns anymore. Adding to my three points above this proves even more useful when you are required to take notes while attending a meeting or discussing things with customers for example; you'll never be able to focus on the important things as well when you constantly struggle with your typing. So I'd definitely recommend it for anyone developing software, you'll never regret the effort! But to be fair it should be mentioned that for actual coding in particular (i.e. not the other typing tasks mentioned) it requires more time to achieve these benefits, because all those special characters commonly used in programming languages are the hardest to get by, touch typing wise (for all the others there is Intellisense anyway :) ) Ciao, Steffen Opel

Chris Losinger wrote: Are there any tools out there that will convert an existing WinHelp setup (.RTF, .CNT, .HPJ, etc) into HTML Help ? Before going the commercial route I'd try the free HTML Help Workshop from Microsoft itself. It is not utterly sophisticated and some people have reported limitations/weirdnesses with complex projects, but it has worked fine for me with simple WinHelp configurations. Ciao, Steffen

Daniel Turini wrote: I develop applications that run tipically in 4-way or 8-way SMP. One of the biggest challenges is keeping all processors working. Ah, the right guy at the right moment, eventually :-) I've been googling quite some time looking for a tool to do just the opposite, i.e. forcing an application to use one and only one cpu on W2K pro. Keywords seem to be a bit challenging here, the only thing I came up with is an apparently complicated and W2K server only procedure for tuning the entire working set. Task manager allows one to set afinity alongside priorities, but only manually. One can start 'cmd.exe' with a priority flag, but unfortunately not with a similar afinity flag. I even tried applying the application compatibility toolkit W98 layer, hoping and asuming this would imply single cpu usage, but to no avail. Any idea/hint would be great! You know, it's pretty annoying to always go the manual route when trying to run a otherwise deadlocking game for a few spare minutes between workload ;-) Thanks and Ciao, Steffen