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For those of you keeping score at home, let's review the "Microsoft Unicode Story":

• Windows 2000 supports Unicode and ANSI—you can develop for either one
• Windows 98 supports ANSI only—you must develop for ANSI
• Windows CE supports Unicode only—you must develop for Unicode

While Microsoft has tried to make it easy for developers to implement software that runs on these three platforms, the Unicode/ANSI difference can make things difficult and is typically one of the biggest problems I run into. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft is firmly behind Unicode and I strongly encourage you to use it. Just be aware that you will run into issues that take time to resolve. My suggestion to you is to try to work with Unicode as much as possible and, if you're running on Windows 98, convert to ANSI only if and when you have to.

Unfortunately, there is yet another small issue that you should be aware of: COM.