Hi All, Thank you for your commentaries. In the meantime, I read up in Python-Dev and came across a post by Johnatan LaCour which kind of nicely sums up the state of affairs: "Its really a shame. There seems to be some consensus about multi-processing, but not a whole lot of interest in making it easier out of the box. When it comes to multi-processing, batteries really _aren't_ included. Sure, you have lead dioxide and some sulphuric acid, but you have to put them together to make your battery. This isn't the end of the world, but I find it tedious, and I am sure it confuses and frustrates people new to Python." Possibly things are not much brighter for other languages.
I'll keep on trying malv -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list