Well I really don't want to, but I think I'm going to have to switch to VB.NET because:
a) much better support for GDI+ (so far I've been using the freeware exports of the libraries that someone kindly made)
b) much better support for DirectX (although from what I read it's still nothing compared to using C++)

I've had a play and I can forsee a huge list of questions building already!! So rather than leave endless threads on this forum, does anyone have a good book or online tutorial (or anything else) that they can recommend to get me started.

Ta

Paul