In a somewhat blog-like news post, I'll try to cover what we have been up to, but also answer some questions I see again and again (consider this something between a news post and a faq).

Let's get the obvious out of the way. There were no releases for March (except for Windows Vista, which was prepared by Renato a.k.a. Gandolas). We will go directly to April. And yes, the April releases will all be Full. The released date is set to April WID, 2007. WID being When It's Done. We do our best and hope to have it ready as early as possible, but honestly, we cannot set a deadline.

I have moved back to Athens for Easter. No worries, I brought my laptop (which carries AutoPatcher-related files) with me, so I can work on AutoPatcher. So far I have fixed a handful of bugs. The most important is no-doubt the Office detection under Windows 2000. We still have to test a few Office applications to see if they are detected correctly. My goal is to support all versions of Office from 97 to 2007. So far the only version of Office to pass the detection test 100% has been Office 2007. Office 97 has not been tested at all yet (I guess very few still have it or even use it).

People have been asking about including MsgPlus, yet again. As I stated in the forum, as long as MsgPlus bundles sponsor software, we will not even consider including it. Somebody mentioned a possible switch from sponsor to mailing lists, which in my opinion doesn't help much. So let's define the type of applications which are not include-able:

Any application which includes or offers to install adware, spyware, spamware, sponsors or malware, regardless of the default settings, will not be ever considered for inclusion in AutoPatcher.

I remember a long time ago, I saw a screenshot of MsgPlus' installation. I noticed there were two buttons on the sponsor screen. One read "I refuse to give my support". If giving my support to MsgPlus means for me to install crap on my computer, then hell no! Why does the author tie 'support' to 'crapware'? I think donations are much better than bundling junk. It may not bring as much money, but at least it's honest. Also, you know that whoever donated, really appreciates your work.

Let us know what you think.

As always, not a month can go by without weird hardware glitches (consider this my personal rant of the month).

My father bought a new 250GB drive for his computer. A Western Digital WD2500KS. Since the computer has had its share of layer-eight problems (no doubt caused by the unique ability of its users to turn any computer into a worthless piece of hardware sucking up electricity for no good reason), I decided to go for a format. The computer's case has been open for ages (though I never understood why). While connecting the new HDD, I noticed that the fan on the graphics card (ATI 9800SE) was broken as if somebody had been slamming it with a hammer for hours. I'll come to this later. The new hard disk (the WD2500KS) would gracefully appear in the BIOS, but Windows couldn't be bothered. I ended up disconnecting the drive and downloading a BIOS update for the troublemaker Asus P4P800S-X motherboard. Now every piece of hardware was happy. Except for the ATI card. I ended up replacing the whole heatsink-fan combo with an after-market Zalman. This was no easy task, since I had to literally break the thermal grease ATI had used. At least everything is back to normal now. Lesson learned.


Best regards,
Antonis Kaladis (a.k.a. Raptor)