Fair enough - hadn't thought of it that way   

Cas - you're mad   

You wouldn't be able to make any distinction between the "interface" (which won't change much) and the "workings" (which might change drastically with every release).

Might not matter a jot within your own code, but would make library writing (or even just working in a team) almost impossible, for both the library user ("where's method X gone?") and the library writer ("I need to change that apparently unimportant method prototype, but what if people are using it?").

Fair enough. I've been using static stuff like this for years and I can't say I've noticed any problems. Then again, I mostly work on smaller projects with relatively stable teams and no unit testing - oh, the luxury!  :-)

Excuse my ignorance ...

I never use singletons myself (I tend to use classes full of static stuff instead), but what's so bad about them anyway?

I know this is an old tread, but just wanted to say that I had the same problem (really slow window creation) on a GeForce 7900 GS and fixed it simply by updating my drivers from 91.something to 94.something