I've never had real problems using Borland C++ Builder. Ok, I didn't do *that* much with it, but I loved it better then VC++. Me too bought a bunch of VC++ books, but still onluy managed to write one program, and that was a huge pain in the ass. It took my 2 days how to figure out how to save a file, after the mainframe had shown the savedialog (and actually created the file), and in my view save the file itself. Only that made me move back to VB. Programming should be a bout programming, not about learning the IDE first before you can do something. The IDE has neat stuff though, I love the macro's. But then, without a project, no need for macro's ;-)
And another huge negative thing of VC++ IMHO is that it's NOT C++, it's MFC programming, and by coincidence, the language looks like C++, but it definitely is not.
That's another reason why I like Borland better.
Now I don't know about database performance, neither richtext (I use wordpad if I handle richtext files :-), but at least it's syntax (the stuff you write, not the VCL, which is pretty powerful by the way) is just plain C++ (with better Ansi compliance then V-MFC-++).
But then, every job has it's tool, and I'm sure there are enough reasons to find why using VB, VC++, Delphi, Borland, and all other langauges. If you have the time, check them, compare them, then make your decision.
If you don't have the time, stuck with the tool you know best since that will be the fastest way for you to write a program.

And don't forget, most parts of Visual C++ is not ActiveX either, only they use MFC code for their objects where Borland (indeed) uses object pascal.

And besides, VC *is* event driven, only problem is that there are not much objects you can insert visually (why did they call it *Visual* C++ anyway, only true visible part is the sourcecode :-))

Hmm some how I have the feeling this thread should belong in another part of this board.... :-)