PNEWS -- Patri-Soft Technical Update & Upgrade Notice
November 1992 -- Patriquin's Utilities/Tools -- Volume Number 1

This our first attempt at a Patri-Soft newsletter. The first time out it is
a little short but we hope you still find it valuable. We want to let you
know what we are up to in our development projects, and a little about our
future plans. New releases of some products are available. We'll tell you
a little about them and hope you consider upgrading.

We're working hard to keep all our products moving forward and have great
plans for the future. We value you as a customer and hope you are
satisfied with our products. If you should ever have a question, or just
want to call and chat, phone me at 714-422-3727. I'll be happy to talk
with you anytime. Thanks for giving us a few moments of your valuable
time.

Norm Patriquin 
President 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Patriquin Utilities

The Patriquin Utilities never seem to stop growing! Here are some of the
major enhancements we have implemented.

PCOPY has been given menus and more new parameters. One of our most
outstanding new features is the ability to fully synchronize two hard
disks or directories. This new synchronization process even removes files
and directories when needed. It is great for keeping notebook and desktop
computers in sync with each other. PCOPY now automatically formats output
diskettes when needed. Support for 4DOS file descriptions automatically
copies descriptions with files. A log file can be written to help you keep
track of all copy activities. These are only a few of the major PCOPY
enhancements done. The current version is PCOPY 9.2C.

PSEARCH has been enhanced with a long asked for feature to change text in
files. You can now search for up to 5 strings and replace any or all of
the strings. PSEARCH 5.2B adds and/or logic to each specific string to be
found. An outstanding new feature adds scroll back viewing of all search
results and even lets you go back and review the results of the last
search you performed, even after exiting the program. Word Perfect and
text file viewers let you examine files matching search criteria. If that
isn't enough, PSEARCH has a new launching option that lets you invoke
programs to process files selected from the scroll back display. The
current version is PSEARCH 5.2B.

PDELETE has been upgraded with delete in date sequence functions. Using the
/SO and /FS parameters, PDELETE can delete the oldest files of a directory
until a specified freespace exists. The ability to process a list of files
has been added to PDELETE and PPRINT.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Stowaway Releases valuable hard disk space!

Patri-Soft has recently introduced Stowaway, our unique archival system
designed to let you recover unused hard drive space and delay that next
hard disk purchase. Stowaway automates the process of moving seldom used
or unneeded files off your hard disk onto diskettes. The unique part of
Stowaway is that it keeps track of archived files for you and organizes
diskette storage so any file can be instantly located and restored back to
your hard disk. Some of our Stowaway customers have several thousand files
moved off their hard drive saving megabytes of hard disk storage.

Most people think of archivers as utilities to compress multiple files down
into a single condensed one. These archivers provide only a partial
solution. Stowaway is a complete archive manager for your PC.

Using Stowaway's menus, you may list and select files to be archived from
your hard disk. During selection you can give descriptions to each file
and assign them to logical groups. All this information is maintained in
Stowaway's hard disk catalog. When Stowaway archives the data, it calls
for archive diskettes in numerical order and "stows" your data in
compressed format on the diskettes. The data is maintained on diskettes,
but all information needed to locate and restore it is kept in Stowaway's
catalog on your hard drive.

When you need to restore a file, simply use Stowaway's menus to search for
files by name, group, directory, date, or descriptive keyword. Stowaway
will present a list of all matching files and let you select ones to be
restored. The restore process will automatically determine the diskette
number containing the data and request it be placed in the drive. A
typical restore takes less than a minute.

Hard disk storage costs over $3.00 per megabyte. Archive diskette storage
costs about $.50 a megabyte. Save your money! When I first started using
Stowaway, I immediately saved 20 meg of hard disk space in just a few
minutes! That's $60 of hard disk space. Stowaway can release much needed
hard disk space for you, as well as help you organize any files you may
have stored offline on diskettes.

Stowaway is great for storing picture files, BBS downloads, word processing
documents, spreadsheets, logs, databases, and especially old software.
Don't delete files trusting you will not need them again, archive with
Stowaway for peace of mind.

Stowaway is available for $39.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Auto Restore

We have added a new product to compliment Stowaway that automatically
restores archived files if and when they are accessed by applications you
use.

Auto Restore may optionally be installed and resides in your system
watching all file accesses during normal application activities. It
detects when any program attempts to access a file that has been archived.
It can do this because, with Auto Restore, Stowaway optionally leaves the
archived file on the hard disk with zero size and a time of 12:00am and
therefore the file occupies no space but is still visible.

When any program tries to read or write one of these files, Auto Restore
detects the access attempt and searches Stowaway's archive indexes to
verify the file is archived and, if so, pops up a window within your
application to tell you an archived file has been referenced and asks if
you would like to restore it for processing.

If you respond <Yes> to restore the file, Auto Restore then asks you to
place the archive volume in the drive and proceeds to restore the file. If
you respond <No>, Auto Restore notifies DOS, and subsequently your program
or command, that the file is inaccessible. The program or command
accessing the file will take its normal action when a file is not
accessible.

After the restore is complete, the text window is removed from your display
and the active program or command continues its normal operation. Auto
Restore goes back to waiting for the next archived file to be accessed.

At this time Auto Restore only works with text mode applications; so it
will not operate when your system is running applications like Windows.

Auto Restore gives you added freedom to archive more files to offline
storage volumes. Since it takes care of all restore processing
automatically, you can archive files and trust they will be immediately
accessible anytime they are needed. Order Auto Restore when ordering
Stowaway and get a $10 discount. If, for any reason, you don't like it
just return it for a full refund.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
MegaBack & MegaBack Plus Hard Disk Backup

Patri-Soft announces our new backup system, MegaBack. We have been in the
file management business for many years and kept thinking one of the major
software houses would finally develop an easy to use backup system that
provided advanced features every user needs. They never did! Now, MegaBack
makes available one of the most advanced backup systems available.

To be honest, if you are into jet speed, Megaback is not for you. To keep
MegaBack reliable, we have developed it to use all standard DOS
facilities. This means it is compatible with more systems, and is not
sensitive to what diskette controller chips you are using, and the speed
your machine is running at.

MegaBack does not rely only on the brute force backup method. Instead, it
implements clean intelligent backup techniques to reduce backup times, and
save diskette space. MegaBack compresses data better than 50% and daily
backup can be complete in two minutes!

MegaBack has all the standard features for backup systems like automatic
diskette formatting, Full/Incremental Backup, menu driven restore, file
exclusion, index recovery and more. In addition, MegaBack has other nice
features not found in other products. These include, stopping and
continuing a full backup at another time, showing you what files are about
to be backed up and letting you exclude them immediately, detecting bad
backup diskettes dynamically, discarding them, and continuing the backup
process, and many more.

MegaBack is our shareware backup system being offered for $39. MegaBack
Plus is our new retail version that's almost ready to go. It will contain
advanced features and utilities like backup password protection and menu
selectable backup set management. MegaBack Plus will be priced at an
introductory price of $59. Current MegaBack users will be able to upgrade
to MegaBack Plus for $20.

Keep watching MegaBack, you are just seeing the beginning! We have great
plans for its future. If you are looking for a simple but effective backup
system, give MegaBack a look. We don't think you will be disappointed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ordering Upgrades

Enclosed is a reply envelope with a price list of all products and
upgrades. Users may upgrade from any version of a product. Users who have
purchased products within the previous 6 months may receive free upgrades
by downloading them from the Patri-Soft BBS. If you previously purchased
an individual utility at $20 and wish to upgrade to a full set of the
Patriquin Utilities with a User's Guide, Patri-Soft will apply a $15
discount toward the purchase price of the Utilities.

Users responding using our reply envelope will be maintained on our mailing
list and will be notified of future special offers and upgrades. Take time
to upgrade today so you won't forget. Your upgrade fee entitles you to a
year of technical support and BBS download upgrades for a product.

Latest versions of all Patri-Soft products:

PCOPY      9.2C        PDELETE   4.40
PSEARCH    5.2B        PPRINT    5.50
PALERT     2.40        PATTRIB   1.50
PTOUCH     2.00        EasyDial  4.40
MegaBack   1.41        Stowaway  1.91

Patri-Soft
5225 Canyon Crest Dr, Suite 71-358, Riverside, CA 92507
Voice: 714-352-2820;  Fax: 714-352-1527;  BBS: 714-352-2820

  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  |   From the America Online - New Product Information Services  |
  +===============================================================+
  | This information was processed from data provided by the      |
  | above mentioned company. For additional details, contact the  |
  | company at the address or telephone number indicated above.   |
  |    All submissions for this service should be addressed to    |
  |   BAKER ENTERPRISES, 20 Ferro Drive, Sewell, NJ 08080 U.S.A.  |
  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
