i read that too..and i got uniform results under Win7, Ubuntu Intrepid and Lucid...but all under GCC/G++ and MinGW...plus it was a surprise as i never thought of it that way (see post #2..lot of ppl don't know)... so i posted here to know if people do really make use of this in practice..

btw, Paul's comment on the need to over-allocate blocks was insightful too..