This may be old news to everyone here, but news travels slowly in my neck of the woods. Anyway, Microsoft is now giving away their optimizing C++ compiler and linker, no strings attached. Get it here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/).

yes, this thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2885) also covers this topic. there seem to be issues with MT dynamic linking, haven't tried it myself yet though.

The "no strings attached" part is debatable. I doubt MS will do anything which won't give them much more back (I'm not implying that's bad). They know they are losing developer mindshare to other compilers and other platforms, they know a platform is as good as the applications it runs, thus... developers! developers! developers! developers! (http://www.msboycott.com/media/ballmer_monkey.mpg)