Sometimes, getting upgrade reminders is good...

Above is one of our many local floatplanes, heading off to Vancouver Island probably.

This evening, I got an email from WinZip telling me about an upgrade to their version 12.0. At first, I didn't pay much attention, because I have their version 11 on my XP machine, and there's a cost to upgrade that to version 12. Then, just on an impulse, I checked the code for the registration of the version 11 on the XP machine, and compared that to the registration code that was included with the email about the version 12 upgrade. These were different registration codes. So I had evidently forgotten that I'd paid for a version 12 installation on this newer computer while it had Vista installed. I'd lost all that when I wiped out the Vista to install this Windows 7.

So I checked the WinZip email again, and it said that as a registered user of version 12, I was entitled to a free upgrade to version 12.1, and it helpfully provided my registration codes. So I downloaded the new version of WinZip, and entered my registration codes, and now it is back and working again.

Incidentally, this was no big deal, because there are two or three very good free zip programs available on the web if you ever need one in a hurry. WinZip is good, but it isn't the only one around by any means. Jzip and 7zip are two others that come to mind.