Autopatcher August 2007 released

[Osiris]

The Autopatcher team seems to be back on track with the release of core and update Autopatcher files for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 Server. Additionally, and for the first time, Autopatcher files for Office 2002, 2003 and 2007 have been released as well.
Versions for Vista and Windows Server 2003 64-bit will follow shortly thereafter. Let me explain the Autopatcher concept with just a few words. Instead of connecting to Microsoft to either use the automatic updates or to download the patches manually you can download Autopatcher instead which contains all official patches released by Microsoft.
The advantages are of course that you can apply all relevant patches at once, have total control over which patches are applied and do not have to connect to a Microsoft server at all to download and apply the patches. This is also a great way for admins or users with more than one operating system to download the files once and execute it on as many computers as needed.
The difference between core and update patches are that the core files contain all patches from the beginning to the current month while the updates only contain the patches that were released by Microsoft since the last Autopatcher version, which usually means patches of the last 30 days.
source: Autopatcher Homepage

[Osiris]

Microsoft requested an immediate takedown of the Autopatcher download pages with the reasoning that they want to make their downloads available only from their servers and from nowhere else. It is however kinda strange that it took them four years to request the takedown and many users fear that this has something to do with WGA enforcements.
The Neowin admin who was contacted asked the same question and received the following answer:

I asked the representative if Windows Genuine Advantage had anything to do with it and he categorically told me this was not the case, he added that Windows Update for pre-Vista versions of Windows can now be accessed using Firefox and that the concern at Microsoft had more to do with the possible malicious code that could be redistributed with certified Microsoft updates.

This is a sad day indeed.
Read More:
Official Autopatcher Announcement
Neowin Forum Thread
Autopatcher Torrent Downloads