Multitask with fork

Win32 does not support fork but it does have Win32::Process. I check software installation and various other factors for the US Postal Service's point of sales systems using a multi-tasking set of Perl scripts running on Windows NT 4.0 workstations. A parent script starts several child processes running Perl scripts which do the actual checking. The parent feeds the child a machine name. The child makes the checks and sends the result back to the parent script. The parent script writes theresults to a file and then feeds another machine name. The processes continue until all machines have been checked. Speeds vary based on network conditions, what is being checked, how efficiently I have written the child process, etc. I have achieved speeds over 10,000 machines per hour. Given 40,000+ machines to check, multi-tasking is the only way to go.