When will the Mbox 2 Micro include the install DVDs for LE 8.0 in the box?

[John H]

It seems a better option for me than buying the upgrade for Pro Tools LE 8.0 to use with my current Mbox2.

If I buy the upgrade through Digidesign it's £106, I can't find any links to ways of buying a boxed upgrade on DVD but a few months ago they were listed as £19 in addition to the cost of licence upgrade cost if I remember correctly. I want to physically own the upgrade on DVD for that price, or in fact, if I bought a new system and the upgrade was free, I'd still want to own it on DVD, not as a 4Gb download.

I can't find any way of buying the Mbox 2 micro through the digidesign store in the UK either but I can buy a boxed 8.0 LE upgrade from an online reseller for £96.

If I buy an Mbox 2 Micro, getting a very handy second system out of the deal. My existing mac can stay with Tiger and Pro Tools LE 7.1 and I can buy an Mbox 2 Micro from another on line reseller for as little as £144.

It's no use without the upgrade of course and I'm convinced 7.1 wouldn't work with my current Mbox2 on a system with Leopard installed so that would mean wasting money on the 7.4 upgrade to get up and running when 8.0 is available.

It's being hell moving from a perfectly working Audiomedia III / Toolbox XP system to the Mbox2 just so I can continue to use my favourite software under OS X.

Some sessions my beige G3 could handle under OS 9 years ago fall over on my 800Mhz G4 with almost 3 x the RAM, USB/Firewire is the only option when I move to a mac mini but for my purposes, the Mbox2 is effectively just a dongle to go along with the iLok that enabled me to use LE for sequencing and editing. I can't fault the sound quality of the unit but it's being so cranky from day 1 that I can't even use the Mbox2 for the output of system audio because flash based content regularly loses audio and I'm forever having to re-connect the Mbox2 to get it working again.

I monitor the Mac's internal audio through the Mbox2 inputs as a work-around.

Once I get a mac mini in a few weeks as a tie over system, then get an oxford based external drive to record to, I'm going to be looking at the cheapest way of getting both my macs running Protools LE with 8.0 on the Mac Mini, using my current mac for hosting software synths.

I already have a spare USB midi interface I don't use at present and a cross over ethernet cable for sharing files or even running SynergyKM, for this very purpose.