Software publishers R-Comp have recently rolled out an updates for number of their Internet-related packages by this month - including chat client Grapevine that reportedly locked punters out of chatter to friends electronically on MSN and ICQ, prior to last week's update. This new version of GV, namely 2.12, is predicted to address problems with two instant messaging networks.

R-Comp told its users: "Due to a variety of changes to the MSN and ICQ protocols, we have come across a few difficulties with logins, so we have updated Grapevine accordingly to solve things. We have also tracked an assembly timeout problem with MSN."