:: BioWIN - Little Bit Of History

The author of BioWIN was interested in the area of biorhythms already in his teenage years. In 1983 he and his father created a Biorhythm program for one of the first home computers - 8-bit Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Later with the first purchase of a PC AT clone in the late 80's the author created a DOS version, which was also a programming excercise in his early university years.

The author's mother enjoyed and followed the biorhythms charts a lot. When in 1991 he has got his fist Windows machine and the old Spectrum was put to the closet, she was complaining: "How good is this new powerful computer, when I cannot get my biorhythms charts anymore?". It was true. Around that time there were no Windows biorhythm programs around.

Wanting to learn Windows programming and make his mum happy, the author - or I should say Greg or me (after all I am writting this myself :D ) started working on the Windows version. This is when BioWIN 1.0 was born.

The first version was used by my parents, family and friends. Everybody liked it a lot. Version 1.0 was a freeware. There was no internet. People were passing the program on the floppies (we did not have AOL in Europe). Encouraged by friends the V3.2 was released as a shareware. Later in 1998 the V4.0 and V4.01 were released and placed on the first Internet Software sites (SimTel, etc). BioWIN became known all over the world. The shareware version of BioWIN 4.0 has 10.000 downloads on Download.com up to the date.

After 1998 there was a big gap... I have finally graduated with my MSc., got a real job. BioWIN was something of the past, something I did put on my resume. Since the free shareware version was offering quite a lot of features that were not disabled, not many people registered the full version. Knowing however, that there are so many users out there gave me a lot of satisfaction.

In December 2003 I was looking for new goals and challenges for the future. That time I have decided to revive BioWIN project again. After a bit of research, I have realized to my surprise and satisfaction that there are at least fifteen different biorhythm programs out there. Few good ones, many not so good as well. Many borrowing from BioWIN. I have found out that some of them (versions for Win CE) were even using BioWIN's name. Besides, I have found sites in Brazil selling illegally my full registered versions ... I had no time for any legal battles. The world was waiting for the new BioWIN.

I have started working on it in Jan 1, 2004 and I have released it on Jan 1, 2005. It took exactly one year. One year of late nights and many weekends spent at home. Believe me, it's not easy to write more software at night when you do the same thing as your full time job.

The version 5.0 is also very special for me for another reason. The release time coincided with the death of my dear cousin Andy (1972-2004). I have dedicated it to him (look for the dedication note in Help | About - click on my name).

So what's next? I am definitely determined to continue the project. I will be adding new features and creating free versions translated into languages of countries where people cannot afford to pay US$10 for a computer program and perhaps use only public computers at schools and libraries. If you are from such a country and can prove it, please write me an email and I will send you a free current (English) copy.

This was the brief history of BioWIN, a program that would never exist without my dear parents Jolanta and Jan. I would like to extend special thanks to them. To my father, for writing the first biorhythm program with me and starting this whole thing and to my mother for "bugging" me to write the Windows biorhythms program.

Also, I would like to thank my girlfriend Tomo for helping me with the icons, colors and images (and tolerating the light until 2:30 am)

I hope you ARE or WILL BE enjoying BioWIN!

Greg