Does anyone else have another way of doing this?

Similar to cynicalpenguin, I write the entire alphabet to a texture during initialization. But when I draw the text, I lock the VB, and then for each character, I add 4 vertices, with the appropriate texture coordinates (which could be looked up from an array also created during initialization), until my VB is full. I unlock it, draw it, and then lock and continue adding more characters. I do this until the entire string has been rendered. If I''m not mistaken, I believe this is how DirectX''s font class works, and I can''t think of a faster method myself for dynamic text. Either way, unless you''re drawing massive amounts of text per frame, or working on a very old computer, drawing even one whole screenful of average sized text shouldn''t be a large issue. The only limitation is that it is harder to deal with formating text nicely. You''d need another texture for every different font face or style.