[humphshumphs]

Originally Posted by pscan.eu

The original discs say "© MG Rover" on them, so as far as I am concerned you can only legally use a VT4 if you have original discs. Using copies (which ones from ebay most likely are) is illegal in my opinion.

I have not fully understood Toaf yet, and so I won't comment.

Concerning VT4 vs pscan.eu here is how I see it:-

VT4 + legal discs is the full fat factory tool. It would appear that it will do anything that a dealer can do, on a 75/ZT only. I would assume that this makes it both as useful and as dangerous as the dealer T4 tool.

Phil-T4 has not as far as I know stated this, but it looks like it will talk to every ECU on a 75/ZT the same as a real one.

VT4 is VIN locked so you can only connect it to the cars that you have agreed with Phil-T4.

You will need I think a suitable XP laptop or a way of virtualising it.

on the other hand...

pscan.eu has been written from nothing by my company and has been legally developed using reverse engineering techniques which are protected in EU law. It contains no code what so ever from MG Rover, Landrover or anyone else, the compiler which we use open source and licensed to use in the way that we use it. The thing is totally legal to own/use whatever, no ifs or buts.

Because we wrote the code ourselves it means that it can be pretty much whatever we or our customers want it to be. Lots of customers want to log live data to a file whilst they drive around and we will do that eventually. If someone suggests a look of the gui which we agree is better then we can change it.

pscan.eu will not yet speak to every ECU on a 75/ZT. We have developed something like 17 ECUs in just over a year which I think is pretty good going. Some of them pretty difficult. I am pretty sure that we will get most of them done, especially as we finally (recently) have our own T4 to work with. That said I would imagine that things like key coding on a 75 might be extremely hard. If MG Rover's crypto was good enough there is a risk that we might not crack it.

You can use pscan.eu on as many cars as you like. You can use it as a garage tool if you are in the trade. pscan.eu LTD have/will attempted to prevent you from sharing the tool with other people though, but you are allowed to sell it on. We are also compliant with distance selling laws, so if you buy one and don't like it within a week or two you get a full refund on return to us.

pscan.eu works on lots of other Rovers and MGs. It can code in fobs on things as ancient as 90s Minis and works really well on cars such as MGF. We can also promise you that it will with time be a great Freelander 1 tool, and it is I think that it is the cheapest tool that actually works on the Defender / Disco 2 TD5 engines.

pscan.eu will work on Windows 2000 right through to 10, Linux and Mac OSX. I have started working on Android and I would say it looks possible but a lot of work. It will probably happen. Iphone and Ipad look unlikely.

Conclusion

I hope that this is fair, I think it is.

If you only own a 75/ZT and want to go deeply technical, and, if you can legally get the discs or already own a T4 (even a broken one) then VT4 probably looks the best option.

If you have a mix of Rovers / MGs and certain Landrovers, or, if you want a something easy to install and guaranteed not to damage your car, then pscan.eu might be a better bet. If you can't get legally get the T4 discs then it is the only legal option.

If you are patient you will probably eventually get 95% of the T4 functionality anyway because we are still developing the tool and that is our aim. There is always likely to be some niche or dangerous thing that we might never get to though. If you think that such a promise is a bit woolly or easily broken then please look at where we were a year a go and ask our customers if we gave them everything that we promised, or not.

There will always be that last few % of features though. If you want those, then you will need access to a T4.

Thanks for that. It's a very informative post

Are you planning to change your software so instead of just being able to read data, changing will also be possible (as in dealer options)??