Greetings:

 
A giant glider-like aircraft has completed the first night flight propelled only by solar energy, organizers said on Thursday.

Solar Impulse, whose wingspan is the same as an Airbus A340, flew 26 hours and 9 minutes, powered only by solar energy stored during the day. It was also the longest and highest flight in the history of solar aviation, organizers said.

Bertrand Piccard, the Swiss president of the project, best known for completing the first round-the-world flight in a hot air balloon in 1999, said the success of the flight showed the potential of renewable energies and clean technology.

"We are on the verge of the perpetual flight," he said.

Jubilant pilot Andre Borschberg told Reuters television: "It was unbelievable, success better than we expected. We almost thought to make it longer, but ... we demonstrated what we wanted to demonstrate so they made me come back, so here I am."

Borschberg, a former Swiss air force pilot who has flown for 40 years, returned to a hero's welcome at Payerne air base in the northwestern canton of Vaud, where hundreds gathered at dawn to watch the aircraft glide onto the Tarmac at 0700 GMT (3 a.m. EDT).

The carbon-fiber aircraft reached a maximum speed of 68 knots (ground speed), an average speed of 23 knots and a maximum altitude of 8,564 meters above sea level, a statement said.

"The success of this first night flight by a solar-powered plane is crucial for the further course of the Solar Impulse project," it said.

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its 64.3-meter (193-foot) wings, is a prototype for an aircraft that its creators hope will carry out its first circumnavigation of the globe from 2012.

The next milestone will be crossing the Atlantic using a second prototype which goes into construction soon.

Weighing just 1,600 kg (3,500 lb), as much as a medium-sized car, the plane powered by four electric motors is designed to save energy from its solar cells in high-performance batteries.

Sponsors of the project, whose budget is 100 million Swiss francs ($95 million), include Belgian chemicals company Solvay SA, Swiss watchmaker Omega, part of the Swatch group, and German banking giant Deutsche Bank. France's Altran is the project's engineering partner.


Here are some helpful things to help you to maintain your computer when you, the higher source forbid, have to format your hard disk.

First, I suggest making two disks, one specifically for your computer and one with programs needed to help with diagnosis and cleaning in case a friend needs the neighborhood techie to lend a hand.

 Make two new folders on your system and name them Home and Utility.  In the home folder download make sub-folders called Drivers and Programs.  In the utility folder make subfolders for Malware, System, Startup and Recovery.

In the Home\Drivers download the newest drivers for your video, sound, modem, ethernet, motherboard chipset and USB 2.0 plus any other hardware you have installed.  In a national brand PC just visit the manufacturer?s website for these but a custom built unit requires a little more effort.  Use System Information from http://www.gtopala.com/ (which we?ll put on the next CD) to identify everything, and then visit each individual manufacturer?s site.

Don't forget drivers for any peripheral devices you have like printer, scanners, cameras etc. (Most of if not all of the following are free.)

 In the Home\Programs folder put important software that would need to be downloaded each time you reload Windows.  Things like:

 Open Office: www.openoffice.org

Acrobat Reader:  http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html?promoid=BUIGO

Flash Player: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?promoid=BUIGP

Google Toolbar: http://toolbar.google.com/T4/

Picassa: http://picasa.google.com/

 Also get the latest version of your antivirus software as well as anything else you think may save you time in the future (plus all this stuff is free)

 In the Utility\Malware folder you'll want:

 Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

Spybot: http://www.spybot.info/en/spybotsd/index.html

Spyware Blaster: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

CWShredder: http://www.trendmicro.com/cwshredder/

HijackThis: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php

AVG: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5

In Utility\System get:

 Winsockfix: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Network-Tweak/WinSockFix.shtml

TCP Optimizer: http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

System Information: http://www.gtopala.com/

 For the Utility\Startup folder download http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_pages/startups_all.zip and unzip it and then delete the .zip file.  This is a searchable HTML based list of programs that run with Windows and describes which are needed, which aren?t and which are bad.

For the Utility\Recovery folder download:

PCI File Recovery: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

PCI Smart Recovery: http://www.pcinspector.de/smart_media_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

Restoration: http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html

 That should be a good start.  Burn a Home CD and a Utility CD and you now have everything needed to repair both hardware and software.  As I said about the Home folder add other items you think may be of use.  Over time these will evolve as you discover new things and update the existing ones.

Also, if you want to spend a tiny bit of your hard cash on a system utility program that I use frequently, give system mechanic a whirl.  You can try before you buy of course.  Get it @: http://www.iolo.com/  This puppy will find solutions to most computer problems.  Don't worry about getting  the Pro version. 

Enjoy and hey, be careful out there?