I take it you've never read a magazine such as PCWorld or PCMagazine? For example, last months PC Magazine had a review of WinXP Longhorn.

I read the magazines. They beat everything up like the newspapers do when there's a major disaster and they usually favour the magazines that will give them the biggest rap. That's the power of mass media for you.

That isn't due for release for at least another year, yet they gave you a run down of some of the new features.

Yep and six months before the release and yet again at 3 months they'll repeat the article and only change the odd capital letter and fullstop, ahh though they'll manage to update the masthead on the front page. "WINDOWS LONGHORN A STEP CLOSER!", sucking more people into buying their rag.

Additionally before Adobe Photoshop 7 came out, PC World had a nice review of the new features it would contain.

Photoshop 7 is stable, very reliable and argueably the best imaging application in the world. What features it contains over V6.0 is a bit of a mystery though. The way Photoshop was marketted probably has something to do with that. There's no 'versions.txt' in there like mIRC has that I can see so unless you read all of the magazines all of the time from page one to page 128 (or wherever it happens to end) and then actually believe what they all say then ignorance is not only an excuse but also a reason. I use Photoshop for web imaging and will admit that I'd be lucky to use 5% of it's abilities, if that.

Same with Norton (Symantec) 2003, and Zonealarm, etc.

Yep, they know how to promote their stuff. They fill your email box with so much "V3.0.1 is out GET IT NOW for only US$99".

Again, never went to a hardware review website? I read a review of the AMD 3000+ XP processor before it was released. I also read reviews of the nVidia GeForce FX (which to my knowledge still hasn't been released) back in December. Plus hardware manufactures always throw huge conventions to show off their products. AMD, Intel, etc they are notorious for throwing such conventions.

Yeah and boy do they know how to stuff people around. Take Inhell for example - Remember the race to 1GHz?? AMD got there first, Inhell followed soon after, all the server admins and high-end PC owners drooled over the shiny new 1GHz Pentium only to find out it was a dud and had to get it exchanged when they started overheating and either lagging the machine so much you could make a cuppa while the machine booted or just fried itself altogether. So much for the fanfare beforehand, not a thing was mentioned about what Inhell managed to leave out of the processor.

Result: AMD got more marketshare and everyone got forewarned about something that would take another trip to the computer shop to fix. It's a bit like the release of a bad mIRC script really. Then again you don't have to pay for a .zip file full of text.

Well as I just showed they do give out this information, but in any case they do NOT respect you. Are you gonna tell me MS respects its customers?

I think they do, perhaps not at a personal level. Uncle Bill doesn't know any of us from Adam, though one significant stuff up with Windows releases and that could mean the end of Micro$oft and Bill's $10m mansion. They keep sending me CD's containing pre-releases for Windows 2003 (Windows .NET) so I guess they like me enough to assume I will spend the equivalent of 3 weeks wages on their server OS.

On a serious note, there's a big difference between Windows, Photoshop and mIRC though. Adobe and Micro$oft are huge organisations, probably with shareholders, that will expect the respective companies to perform well and gain more marketshare, etc. Khaled seems to have the same approach as most mIRC scripters - If you want it, get it, if you don't, here's some links to other programmes. The evidence is on his links page.

You mean like the free samples that companies frequently give out at the grocery store so that you can see what their new products are going to be like?

mIRC has a bigger following than any other chat programme, probably more than all the rest combined. I don't think Khaled needs to throw sweetners to everyone he passes in order to gain any added benefit.

I noticed that adding MDX type dialog controls to mIRC has been suggested numerous times, I've also noticed that a "rearrangable" switchbar has been suggested numerous times, as well as a treeview based switchbar, and customizable toolbars, etc, etc. But notice, none of these have ever been added and Khaled has never stated any reasoning as to why they have not and/or will not be added.

Perhaps it never will be added. Perhaps it's in the very next version. Perhaps it can't be done in 5 minutes while managing to maintain mIRC's stability. I personally don't like treeviews as they look messy but would prefer something like this instead. Just my personal view. BTW this image isn't a real screenshot, just a concept.

Summarising: I think that for a one-off $20 us mIRC users get a pretty good deal. There's not alot of software out there who's author does not expect yet another licence fee when a new version is released. And unlike most shareware it's even technically 'optional' as to whether you bother to pay the licence fee.

In my view, while asking for pre-release information is certainly not harmful, it's a bit unfair to expect or demand it though. The cards were laid on the table before anyone 'coughed up'. It's a case of take the deal or take someone else's deal.

As I said elsewhere here the other day, half the fun in downloading a new version is the anticipation and curiosity it creates. It's almost like unwrapping a birthday present.