Lavalys acquired by Finalwire: EVEREST IS WITHDRAWN!

This actually happened back in late November, and a letter went out to me (i.e. licensed Lavalys EVEREST user) advising that Lavalys had been acquired by Finalwire.

Furthermore, the remarkable EVEREST product which I'd been using for years was being withdrawn (i.e. "killed") as part of the acquisition.

Instead, current EVEREST licensees were being given free licenses to Finalwire's hardware monitoring product named AIDA64. I upgraded and received such a license key, if I had any desire to actually use this AIDA64 product.

Quite frankly, I have NO desire to use AIDA64. The reason I use EVEREST (and will now obviously just continue to use its last and final 5.50 version forever or as long as I keep my current hardware, as a "legacy" product, as it works perfectly well with my two current PC's and maybe also even with future hardware I might move to) is because of its OSD presentation. This little window (completely customizable) sits in a small piece of screen real estate and is very attractive and useful. There is also a System Tray icon flyover option for values display but I don't use it, being perfectly satisfied with the OSD window.

As best I can tell, AIDA64 may be a fine product but it does NOT have a similar OSD window feature. Personally, that's exactly what I WANT from a hardware monitor... something visual, on my screen 100% of the time, with optional alarm settings to alert me if something's non-functioning (like a fan, or a power supply). As it looks to me AIDA64 does none of this (but maybe I'm just put off by the web site presentation of the product and maybe it really does do these things, though I think not).

So, R.I.P. Everest!!! You were (and still are) the program I will use. I've used it ever since Motherboard Monitor 5 went out of existence some years back, and will continue to use it indefinitely into the future... as long as it still works on my machines.

I don't know what the Finalwire people were thinking when they "bought up their competition and then killed the product", since AIDA64 seems to be a very different product from EVEREST.

Why not sell both??? You just bought out Lavalys... why not offer both products???

Very odd.

Well, it looks like I may have jumped the gun in my reaction to AIDA64.

Looks like the problem is probably with the Finalwire web site, which fails to provide screenshots of the OSD presentation.

Turns out the OSD presentation IS contained in AIDA64 (which I just installed and explored). It's just not mentioned or demonstrated with screenshots on the web site!

Actually, it looks like AIDA64 is the successor to EVEREST, from the very Lavalys/Everest author who's now moved on and founded Finalwire.

So, I will explore AIDA64 further. It may not be so bad after all, and of course is now an "active" product supporting new hardware.

And besides, I'm grandfathered in to a license from EVEREST, so it didn't cost anything.

Again, my apologies for my initial apparently incorrect reaction. But if only they'd shown the OSD display in their screenshots I wouldn't have been so misled.

Golden said:

Did you manage to take avantage of this Free upgrade to AIDA64 | AIDA64

Yes. I did that back in November when they sent out the announcement email.

But I hadn't installed it, after perusing the Finalwire web site and seeing only large window displays of detailed information. I just assumed it was a DIFFERENT product.

I had no idea it was actually the SAME product, including OSD, because there was no mention of OSD and no screenshots of OSD. For me, OSD is why I used Everest (and Motherboard Monitor 5 before Everest)... to have a small window with my crucial hardware values displayed (and monitored, and possibly trigger alerts and alarms).

I have sent a ticket to Finalwire, recommending that they add mention of OSD and show examples on their AIDA64 pages. I would have reacted positively rather than negatively back in November, if only I'd realized it was a newer/better version of Everest.

Anyway, as of right now I've uninstalled Everest, installed v1.50 of AIDA64, reproduced my OSD customizations, and I'm off and running.


Only issue so far is that for some reason when AIDA64 launches there's about 30 seconds of 100% CPU usage (and loud fan to cool the CPU). After this, the program appears and CPU usage drops to normal.

I've written to Finalwire about this as well, as it does not seem right for this to happen. Certainly, that's not how Everest started (although it also took a little while... but not with 100% CPU usage).

It is Everest, just with a new name. If you really want to get down to it the original was AIDA32 (or if you really want to get technical, AIDA16 before that) which as I understand it was only licensed and never sold to Lavalys, and is the same author so the only thing that has changed is the name.

Golden said:

Cool. It would interesting to hear how it stacks up to Everest based on your experience.

Well, now that it's clear this really IS "Everest 64" (with some OSD icons changed a bit, etc.), I'm in a much better place.

I installed it on a second machine and though I saw the same initial symptom of "takes 30 seconds to start, all at 100% CPU with loud fan noise to match" I had occasion to re-boot shortly thereafter. Remarkably, after re-booting the program no longer started in this way.

Instead, it started rather quickly (certainly much faster than Everest previously did). Very interesting... perhaps because it's a 64-bit app now running on a 64-bit OS.

I then went to my other machine, re-booted it as well, and sure enough it too now starts quite quickly now, certainly without this 30-seconds of 100% CPU I saw right after install.

I'm thinking that maybe there's thus a need to re-boot just once after install, to get the program behaving as it really should behave.


Anyway, everything's now working fine. Situation back to normal (except that there was a newer 1.50 version released shortly after I downloaded the original 1.20 in early December, which I've now upgraded to, though with no visible change for my hardware).

I can't recall if Everest had a "CPUID" item (in RMB -> Tools), but there's certainly one there now with AIDA64. Very cool.