Very nice indeed. That solves all of the concerns I had when I first tried Impulse months ago.

I use the Impulse Dock on an everyday basis, so I'm quite keen to see by how much you've improved the performance.

Here's my top feature request, by the way, that I don't think has been addressed yet: make it possible to hide the Dock icons of non-Stardock products. To elaborate: Stardock games can be listed on the Games tab but hidden from the Dock. If you add a non-Stardock game to the Games tab, though, it always shows up on the Dock and the only way to remove it from the Dock is to remove it from Impulse altogether. For example, I have GalCivII and both expansions installed but I only have TotA visible in the Dock. If I added Civ4 and the Warlords and Beyond the Sword expansions to the Impulse Games tab, though, I would have three Civ-related icons cluttering up my Dock.

- Ash

Oh, wait. That's actually only my second most wanted feature. My first most wanted feature: for the love of all things holy, please make my mouse's forward and back buttons work to navigate the Store or Community pages! Until that happens, there's a 0% chance that I'll even consider using Impulse to browse SD's various sites/forums.

- Ash

Good stuff. Thanks for the update.

Now about allowing users to select the currency of their transaction and making that choice a permanent part of their account preferences ... 

Those are great tweaks.  I wouldn't worry about most of the complaints because the majority are based on not paying enough attention to realize you can disable impulse from running until you need it.  It's a nice downloader, perhaps the easiest fix is just educating people as to their options as it's obvious finding answers on their own is too challenging for many.

Honestly, it's more of a user issue than a developer issue.

If there are that many people complaining about it, it's not just a user issue. While I agree that it's simple enough to disable Impulse from running on start-up, it seems many of those complaining didn't even know how to do so.

Some great looking updates there, Brad. Keep up the good work!

It's both.  It's a user issue because they're tards for not taking thirty seconds to check the menu to disable it.  It's a developer issue because keeping things resident in memory really should default to no if it's not going to bring up the option during install.  It's just the kind of thing neat freaks don't like having around.

As long as Impulse

1)doesn't force you to work on start-up by default

2)doesn't crash the way it systematically did last time I tried it

I don't mind using it.

I was one of the people who doubted Impulse whenit was first released but since then i have been converted and now like the program. I wont say its my favorite program i know of but it is useful enough (not that we are given any other choice for updates) to warrant installation on my pc.

This new update that is planned will go even further towards making the program lighter and easier to use. My only moan at present with the program is that it does feel bloated and takes far too long to start up (unless you have fast start activated, but i have enough things running in the background thank you).

So in all i am looking forward to the next update!

Any chance of getting a "game manual" option when you right click games you've bought? Steam has this minor feature and I noticed its missing in the current version of Impulse.

It has a dual purpose:  filling the time untill the game downloads and making sure I have a clue as to what to do when I start playing. 

Impulse: We're listening - haha thats the biggest laugh I've had all day.

You have still NOT provided an easy way for people without Intetnet access to patch their games. Talk about marking patching difficult.

Last time I checked, downloading anything requires Internet access.

Que?

Yes, but at least with that I can downlaod it at work and run it at home. With Impulse I am prevented from doing that simple task.

Ah, perhaps I have missed sth... How are you being prevented to run it at home? You download stuff at work, thus installing it. Then you go home and start the game...? You will need Impulse only for downloading, not for anythin else (especially not for playing the game... You CAN play it offline!). But perhaps I missunderstood you...

Cheers!

The problem with Impulse and offline computer is that Impulse requires to connect on Stardock servers when starting for the first time.

OK, the problem here is those of us who don't have home internet access (I used to be in that camp!) but do have public internet access.  You can download a file to a thumbdrive, yes, but with Impulse that's not enough -- you have to install impulse to do the download, and most public computers will treat that as a no-no.

I think the problem here is not that stardock isn't listening, it's that they're having trouble bending over backwards that far for a relatively small group.  Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't try, I'm just saying that "not listening =/= can't be done".

Ron, the point is valid, but I fail to see how in your example Impulse is any different from SDC.

Ron's point is actually different from most other points. With SDC, if you downloaded a game elsewhere and archived it, you could install from the archive on your permanently offline PC.

With Impulse, you can download and archive, but installing from the archive requires Impulse to log in.

The problem is more complicated than most people understand, however. SDC was for all intents and purposes Stardock's own patcher. It had a few miscellaneous 3rd party games, mostly old ones. Impulse is a much bigger and public store, not just a simple patcher. A change to its archiving mechanism needs to please *all* the publishers that have games listed on Impulse and is no easy task. Impulse logging in on archive install doubles as a registration check (whether it's intentional or not to be that way I don't know) to make sure the person installing the archive has the lisence to use it. Fully offline archive installing will still need to make the 3rd party publishers happy - and that's no easy task.

But it's one they've already said multiple times they're looking at the possibility of.