I’ve been sent numerous test results of people trying the new firmware (as reported earlier) on their UJ-835 or similar model drives. Here is a quick summary of media vs detected speeds.

• Verbatim 16X DVD+R = 2x detected
• Ritek 8x DVD-R = 8x detected (previously 2x)
• Imation 8x DVD-R = 8x detected (previously 2x)
• Sony 1x-8x DVD+R = 2x detected
• Princo 4x DVD-R = 2x detected

While it looks like some media compatability has improved, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

If you can add your media tests to the comments, that would help.

Multiple people have contacted me regarding Apple releasing a firmware update for superdrives on the affected machines. Here are the links to the Mac Daily News article and the official Apple page for the firmware update. If people are able to test this and get back to me with their experiances, I’ll update this page accordingly.

Update: It seems there are mixed results - which seems to indicate a partial improvement, however I personally haven’t noticed any improvements. Princo 4x DVD-R discs still come up as 2x discs, and another unknown brand still came up as 2x. Please keep your experiances coming. If you can include media type, that would be great!

Just when I thought I’d seen everything on the Internet, I get proved wrong. The Facts of Farts is quite a good read on what, why, when, and where about farts. It’s also funny to read :)

Looks like this has leaked out onto the web. It hasn’t been released to official beta testers as yet - so if you do want to test it, you can grab it here. If you haven’t already been invited to the Windows Live Messenger Beta, chances are that this won’t work for you - as you need to be migrated onto different MSN Servers. If you would like to be on the testing team for this, send me your email address and I’ll send you back an invite for the beta. I’ve got around 35 invites left to give out - they just keep coming :)

As with the last version, Ahmed has released a patch to remove the ads and other junk to give WLM a nice slick interface. Grab the patch here

For a while now I’ve been hanging on to a working version of pcrd - the linux control program for Icom PCR-1000 scanners. This version will compile with the latest gcc based distributions and work on all known Linux distros. You can find it here. It seems to work well here - the only issue I encounter is sometimes getting the unit to turn on - however after that, it tunes fine for as long as it’s turned on.

If you do notice any problems with pcrd, feel free to let me know - I’ll see what I can do about them. I want to add DSP support, but I don’t have the needed details to do this as yet, so it’s on the todo list.