In another example of misplaced protectionism, Micro$oft have turned the screws on AutoPatcher, forcing those of us who think Windows Update is an unadulterated p.o.s. to give up our convenient one-time download, and to go back to connecting every machine to the interweb, automatic restarts of servers after updating, and manually having to do updates that aren't classed as "critical" by M$ but actually are.

I'm sure that M$ have done this not only because AutoPatcher would allow you to update non-legit copies of Vindoze, but also M$ are moving towards a "rental" licencing scheme which they've already tried bits of with Live 1-Care or whatever the hell it's called, that thing FD signed up for. The future would seem to be you buys your copie of Vindoze (Schmista prob) either as a separate copy or as a pre-installed OEM version, then sign up for a monthly or annual fee to M$ to provide your updates and all the Defender stuff and their wonderful, world-renowned support (they already do this for business customers but it costs a lot and they don't always do what they claim they're going to do.)

In fact, Autopatcher wouldn't do things such as update IE6 to IE7 or MP10 to MP11 or plenty of other WGA-protected things, and by default installed WGA. So really the hookey copies weren't being fully updated and M$ weren't losing out quite as much as you might think they were. It's just that it was f.o.c. and out of M$ control, ergo, it had to die.

Fortunately I fully A'Patched all my kit a while back and now just need critical and essential updates (although it's still bl**dy annoying when you find the server's auto-rebooted itself at 3 in the AM while a huge d'load or file move was taking place..)