Recent changes in both Wx software and OS's meant a re-evaluation of what I was using.
FreeWx had been doing the job for me more than adequately, but a change in the machine running it meant it would no longer run. It used to run on a Windows Server 2003 machine - this was recently upgraded to a Win 2008R2 64 bit server - and FreeWx simply can't run on this without being rebuilt, and Andy has stated this won't happen.
So - I went back to look at VWS and WD. VWS dI eventually discarded (again) but this time becauyse it simply couldn;t run for more than 5 minutes on the server without crashing. This despite Ambient statikng it can run on 64 bit software. Even if I ran in compatibility mode, it kept crashing - so, no longer considered.
Wd - I like(d) the ability to import my historic FreeWx data - that is, until I tried to use it! Firstly, the funciton simply didn't work properly - it would import all data to the curent year and month, regardless of what date I told it to import. To Brian's credit, he did look at it - well, eventually! He fixed this issue but then another issue got introduced - this time it randomly repeated/created data out of sequence within each month. The usual problem then reared its head with WD - the problem was reported and I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited and then got asked for sample data (which had already been sent to demonstrate the problem). Basically the problem was blamed on 'old code' (duh!) but I haven't seen the issue resolved (and not sure if I will as I obviously upset Brian by stating my feelings on the other problem with WD - that of a totally ridiculous and confusing configuration system. Too many config screen with many options being able to be set in 2 or more screens (Internet is a good example as is the range settings for graphs - I dare ANYONE to find this latter config item quickly!).
The other issue was the problem I had getting it to transfer files to a local hardrive (as I run my own server I didn't need to FTP files) - this worked (eventually) but would only update for a few hours and then keep stopping.
So - WD was also discarded and I continued looking....
Until I found Cumulus.
What a breath of fresh air.
Basic. Simple. Easy to configure. Sure, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles (which don;t normally get used anyway). It runs on 64 bit machines. No, as yet it doesn't run as a service (but then, neither did FreeWxd and I overcam e that easily enough).
Steve (Cumulus author) is currently working - at his own pace - Cumulus 2. He isn;t rushing it (and why should he when V1 works adequately?) but, most importantly, it is stable.
3rd party add ons give it the ability to add the data to a SQL database (I re-wrote one of them to import my old FreeWx data so I now have access to it as well).
Give it a look if/when you are looking for a replacement or simply want a simple setup.