I mean that from Microsoft's perspective. They apparently decided to put an object around something as simple and essential to performance as a line buffer. That's when you should have hired a system programmer to do that job.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like their approach in developing an OO-shell - but if it hurts performance that much someone has taken that paradigm too far. It's the typical case of someone with a hammer (OO programmer) trying to approach everything like it were nails.