I have seen a lot of unflattering posts about Mike Leahy and his
program Bookup from one or two posters.

Background:

I first purchased Bookup many years ago -- perhaps it was in 1991 or
1992 at the Phildelphia World Open. He had a little table setup and
was demoing his chess software "Bookup". The one feature that it had
and it has today was "backsolver". "Backsolver" is a very nifty
utililty unlike anything that I have ever seen in any other chess
program then since. His Bookup program and "backsolver" essentially
"connects the dots" and from a given position will lead down you the
best line of play from that point forward. A powerful tool.

I got to meet Mike back then and he is one of the friendiest and
"straight shooters" that I have ever met. A few months ago I
downloaded his Bookup lite software with one of the objectives was to
check about this "spamming" this that had been alledged here. When
you download Bookup lite - which is free, you agree to receive about a
week's worth of emails from Mike about his product 'Bookup".

As promised, I got about 7 or 8 non intrusive emails and that was it -
they stopped. No Spam nothing. About few weeks after that, there was
one other email about a special deal they were offering -- I was ok
with that. Nothing since then. Did I also mentioned that Bookup has
no copy protection - that's a breath of fresh air.

The people posting negative comments about Mike had a bad experience
with either Bookup or Mike both - well anybody that has been in
business long enough will have one customer or two who felt they were
wronged- that's just the way life is -- but I am here to tell you
that Mike has thousands of satisfied of customers - some of whom may
be even afraid to post what they think because we know these two
idiots on r.g.c.c who are coming after anybody and everybody who
stands up for Mike. The one poster is a known and admitted "cracker",
the other has probelms with his multiple personalities responding to
his own posts on r.g.c.c.

Please join me in making a toast to Mike Leahy and wishing him
continued success with his excellent chess program Bookup.

Michael Byrne