1. In my book it says that a double uses 64-bits in an example then on the variable table it says it uses 8 bytes , i.e 32-bits, which is it ?

2. Is memory structured into 1byte segments, so i.e you could say theres no such thing as a 32-bit number or 64-bit rather 8 * 1 byte storage space is need for an Long, double etc.. ?

3. Would it speed anything up to convert a string to Unicode via code first then send it to the memory as a number or is it just as efficient letting Windows do it and does VB.NET have any function to do this ?