This is a continuation on a thread discussion advocating replacing the boost pointer containers with cow_ptr as the default pointer containers. http://code.axter.com/boost_ptr_containers/maintest.cpp http://code.axter.com/shape_test.h http://code.axter.com/cow_ptr.h http://code.axter.com/copy_ptr.h The above code was used to make the comparison, and the following is the result using VC++ 7.1 on XP with a 2G processor. Test performance for interating through a container of pointers via []. vector<copy_ptr<Shape> > 2.20 s boost::ptr_vector<Shape> 3.80 s vector<cow_ptr<Shape> > 7.20 s Test performance for interating through a container of pointers via iterators. vector<copy_ptr<Shape> > 2.36 s boost::ptr_vector<Shape> 4.11 s vector<cow_ptr<Shape> > 6.70 s vector<copy_ptr<Shape> > 2.31 s boost::ptr_vector<Shape> 4.08 s vector<cow_ptr<Shape> > 7.09 s Test performance for initializing and copying container of pointers. vector<copy_ptr<Shape> > 2.39 s boost::ptr_vector<Shape> 2.81 s vector<cow_ptr<Shape> > 0.67 s vector<copy_ptr<Shape> > 2.84 s boost::ptr_vector<Shape> 4.28 s vector<cow_ptr<Shape> > 0.61 s Test performance for populating container of pointers via factory method. vector<copy_ptr<Shape> > 7.00 s boost::ptr_vector<Shape> 1.55 s vector<cow_ptr<Shape> > 3.91 s Press any key to continue . . . I like to see if any one can test this out on other platforms and/or compilers to see if the results differ.