Er is een nieuwe Shareware versie van VAG-COM, zie hieronder de mededeling (bewust niet in het Nederlands vertaald, omdat de shareware versie alleen in het Engels beschikbaar is).
If you bought any hardware from Ross-Tech in the last 6 years, you don't need to read this announcement; it doesn't apply to you.
VCDS-Lite is a replacement for VAG-COM versions 311 and 409. VCDS-Lite will work with any interface that works with the old VAG-COM 311 or 409. It should also work on any version of Windows from 95 though 7, including NT4. It's intended for the excessively frugal among you who are still using ancient Ross-Tech 'Dumb' interfaces from 6+ years ago, as well as the cheapskates with 3rd-party interfaces from the far east. It's available as Shareware, just like those old versions of VAG-COM, which are NO LONGER SUPPORTED as of right now. If you're currently using VAG-COM 311 or 409, you can continue to do so until you require assistance from us, or a new activation, at which point you MUST UPDATE to VCDS-Lite.
Why this update after all these years? Several reasons:
* We got tired of all the whining that those old VAG-COM versions were difficult to get running on Windows Vista and 7. Well yeah, those old VAG-COM versions were released YEARS before Windows Vista and 7! We're good, but we're not clairvoyant. VCDS-Lite fixes that; it should work fine with ALL version of Windows from 95 through 7.
* It gets tedious constantly generating new activations for those of you who can't seem keep your PCs free of viruses. Personally, I've never had a virus on any of my PCs, but then I stay away from prOn and war3z sites. Activations (licenses) for VCDS-Lite will survive reformatting your hard drive, re-installing Windows, and just about anything else you can throw at them, except a whole new PC. Just make a back-up of your license file and keep it in a safe place.
* Lastly, there's the small matter of a trademark dispute we had with a certain car manufacturer. As of this month, we simply can't offer anything called "VAG-COM" anymore! :-O
VCDS-Lite has a bunch of other improvements as well.
* There's a built-in latency test which should make it easy to tell if something is slowing down or responses to those control modules which are "fussy" about protocol timing.
* It shows label-file names in the Auto-Scan just like VCDS has for some years now.
* It has far more label files (and thus much better documentation for many control modules) than the versions of VAG-COM which it replaces.
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but I think this announcement is already long enough. So here's the link to the page where you can get VCDS-Lite:
http://www.ross-tech.com/vcds-lite/download/
OK, I did almost forget this: The documentation (manual) for VCDS-Lite as well as some of the web-pages are not quite finished yet, so please be patient; we're working on them!
Uwe
