heheheheh..... powerbasic forum cracks me up

[Antoni Gual]

You use the tool for the job, Antoni. No one is going to use VB6 (or anything Microsoft-based after Visual Studio 98) for portable programs that need to be able to run on the fly like that. In fact, if you don't do a static compile in VC++ 6, you're still going to need a runtime module (msvcrt.dll).
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Tou are too optimistic, Nek. People uses VB for these uses because it's too much effort in moving to a suitable tool, then you have the built-in comm port support...

I'm starting to think in my case the best tool would be PowerBasic...