>Similar issue on the mac. The calls to get all the information are 
>more expensive and you run the risk of giving up control to other 
>application hence the poor numbers. In the past polling for mouse 
>location for example used a simple/cheap call but this has been 
>changed because of how the event driven stuff works.

Is that necessary?  On the MacOS, for example, the event queue is 
"bypassed" and single/cheap calls are used for tracking feedback in 
what Raskin calls quasimodal events, particularly highlighting and 
outlining types of interactions.