Amazing Box - Correct Information?

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion and speculation about the Amazing Box / Black Box / Magic Box. There are quite a few misunderstandings about these products. I will try to address the issues I know about. Most answers will be restricted to the models for BBD & Viking.

1. Other readers unable to read Magic Card?
The following question and answer can be found at www.embroideryonline.com

Can a Magic Card be read into existing software though a different reader/writer box or embroidery machine?
No. This is to protect copyrights of the original design card or selected designs being used.

Assuming that the Magic card is the same card as comes with the Amazing Box (BHMC-FLASH) this is incorrect: PE Design, Palette, Deco Wizard, PE Scan, Viking Customiser and PES2Card can read this card.
Update 1.8: PE Design, Palette and Deco Wizard can no longer read Magic cards; PE Scan, Viking Customiser and PES2Card are still able to read Magic cards.

2. Amazing Box unable to load designs from disk?
It is possible to load designs from hard drive, floppy, CD-Rom, zipdrive into the Amazing Box software. The only restriction here is 6 at a time.

3. Amazing Box unable to store designs to disk?
The Amazing Box manual states on page I:
This product can read from embroidery cards, disks or hard drive but will only save to designs to an official Amazing Box, Universal Embroidery Translator, DreamMaker, or Magic Box rewritable memory card.

The software that comes with the Amazing Box indeed doesn't save any design to disk. There are other packages, including Great Notions products, that will do this. Furthermore, one doesn't have to be too clever to work out that the various readers will all read the BHMC-FLASH (see item 1 above).
Update 1.8: Great Notions products that are not upgraded will no longer be recognised by the Amazing Box software.

4. Deco List Jun 17, 2000 by Timothy E. Larson:

>BUT IT WILL NOT write to your hard drive or a floppy or ANYTHING
> other than the special card that came with the box.

Again this was a trade off, we could not read everyone's copyrighted cards,
and allow you to save to disk... Or we could add the ability to read
copyrighted cards, allow you to use them on another brand of machine.
For example, Let's say I really like Felix the Cat, but this is only available
for Janome machines. Now with this box, I can purchase a card from a
Janome dealer, and use the designs on my Brother/Baby Lock/Deco machine.

What is missing in the above answer is the fact that, after writing designs to an official Magic Box card, a protected card is no longer protected. The designs can be imported from this card into PE Design, Palette, Deco Wizard, PE Scan, Viking Customizer and PES2card.
Update 1.8: PE Design, Palette and Deco Wizard can no longer read Magic cards; PE Scan, Viking Customiser and PES2Card are still able to read Magic cards.