Well, although the tip to rotate graphics is definately slow, doesn't mean there's no reason to use it... the problem you're having is your trying to get a picture to rotate the instant a button is pressed, etc.. Instead of that, how about you start your application, you have it create all the rotated images in seperate picture boxes, which of course are all invisible to the user, and then during run time you can get the pre-drawn rotations from these picture boxes. It's really not that bad, and you can have fun making one of those cool little "loading" bars..

Just an idea.