Hey Avers,
Well the new software seems to work pretty good on the ol' 660av 7.1. I have come across, however, two minor difficulties. The first is that megaphone picks up after only one ring. This despite the fact that I specified 6 rings in the Express Modem dialog box. I checked with the fax setup to make sure that it had not been set to auto-answer, it hadn't, and I checked the read-me docs that came with the soft-ware. I couldn't find anything that seemed to adress this problem. Anybody have an idea?

Is the Do Not Disturb button (the bell with a red slash through it) depressed? That will force Megaphone to always answer on the first ring.

The second problem may be a little trickier to solve. My wife swears she will never consent to using Megaphone in favor of our old and cranky answering machine. She said some nonsense about how it would a great deal of trouble to have to constantly muck around with the computer.

My question, is there a software program to deal with this? I checked the AV pitstop but I couldn't find anything, nor was there anything in the FAQ's under spousal updates.

Hmmm... That IS a tough one. I can think of two solutions, The first one, and I REALLY hate to suggest this, is Microsoft Spouse 6.0. While it does offer complete spousal capability, assuming you have the hardware to support it (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know-what-I-mean, know-what-I-mean), there are still a number of bugs, and it's also rather slow. I've heard reports that Spouse 6.0 takes as long as two or three hours to get out of bed in the morning, is 25% to 50% slower than Spouse 5.1a, and support for SpouseCook GX is minimal at best. Also, in order to get Megaphone compatibility, you'll have to send in the coupon that comes in the Spouse 6.0 box, and allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery. Microsoft claims to be working on Spouse 6.0.1, which will supposedly solve all these problems, but it's been months since they first announced it, and I haven't seen it yet.

Personally, I like SpousePerfect 3.0.1. It's smaller, faster, and supports SpouseCook GX and Megaphone right out of the box. It's not as full-featured, however, and has a smaller installed base of users, which can lead to recipe exchange problems. Also, it has an annoying tendency to require you to manipulate formatting codes while you're in the midst of enjoying certain recreational activities.