Many of you will be aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report included, as part of its fiscal stimulus package, a temporary reduction in the rate of VAT charged in the United Kingdom from 17.5% down to 15%.

Due to the rules governing the sale of downloadable software within the European Union, VAT is charged at the rate applicable in the vendor’s member state, and so E.U. customers will, from Monday 1st of December, see the rate of VAT charged by our site decrease from 17.5% down to the new 15% rate. The VAT rate is presently scheduled to return to its previous value at the beginning of 2010.

Assuming everything works properly, the new VAT rate should take effect automatically at midnight on Sunday 30th of November (GMT). We recommend that E.U. customers avoid starting the purchase process for a few minutes before and after the rate change, as this will both reduce the risk that you will be charged more VAT than necessary and will afford us a little time to verify that everything has worked as intended.

As usual, VAT registered business customers located in an E.U. member state other than the United Kingdom should contact us in advance with their VAT registration details so that we can verify them in order to avoid paying VAT. If you make your purchase without completing this step, you will be charged VAT, even if you provide a VAT number during the purchase process, as there is no way for our web server to automatically determine that you are entitled to use a given VAT number.

The brand new unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro machines do work with our software, however please keep in mind the following:

• Manufacturers of SSDs (if you have one) do not recommend defragmenting as it is likely to lower the life of the unit. Since SSDs have essentially zero seek time, there will be relatively little benefit of defragmenting or optimizing your SSD in most cases anyway.

• When using CDMaker, you must insert the Install Disc that came with the machine when prompted for a template.

  The downloadable templates that we have available as of 11th November will not work with the new machines as they require additional code that is only available on the install discs that ship with these systems. You cannot use a retail Leopard disc or a seed provided by ADC as a source for the template files unless that disc is also capable of booting the system; most are not.

  If you have already created a template, you may need to choose the option “Create New Template…” from the “Coriolis CDMaker” menu. After inserting your Install Disc, wait for the top option to turn black, then select it. CDMaker should read the required files from your disc.

• We have had one report of problems with CDMaker and the Install Disc that shipped with a MacBook system. Others, however, report that everything works fine. If you do experience difficulties, please let us know as soon as possible.

  Again, make sure that you are using the Install Disc that comes with the machine. This disc is not interchangeable with a retail Leopard install disc, as it contains a newer build of Mac OS X containing extra code required to make the new models function.

When Apple has provided us with suitable materials to create a new bootable disc template for these new systems, we will be able to provide a downloadable template. Until then, please follow the instructions above and contact us if you have any difficulty.