class objects and class instances

ok, i've read about 150 pages of essential com a few weeks ago. i just now started reading it again and i'm kinda lost (please don't tell me to reread the first 150 pages...;) anyways, it says that class instances are heap based and class objects are not heap based...what does this mean? also, exactly what are the two? i'm pretty sure class objects are just COM objects used to instantiated COM classes (which expose the desired interfaces, right?). on that note, why does one com object have to instantiated another one? why can't the one you want just instantiate itself and give you dang interfaces you want? thanks for the help.

-christopher bottaro
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[email protected]
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