More about the Mark VIII Ultra, from an inside source: It has been know since the Mark VI meter was made that there were major errors or inadequte design issues that needed to be solved on the E-meter. The Mark Super VII was just a slicker Mark VII with most of the same crappy electronics but in a cheaper more compact layout. The big reason for the Mark VII was that Golden Era needed a way to make a serious amount of money so that they coukld shoot more movies as Dave [David Miscavige] had decided to redo every single tech * public film that had ever been shot to date except for the TR-4 film. The meter would get Gold the money they needed. Not a penny of that money was spent on designed or producing a new meter. The Quantum E-Meter came about after Dave was torching a bunch of Flag Auditors in Florida at the FLB. He played them a tape in the FH auditorium of LRH yelling at a bunch of auditors and in the tape LRH mentioned a key aspect of the E-meter's design that had never been accomplished. This gave Dave M the idea to update the Mark Super VII with this new aspect and revamp the sales. This is how they would make a bunch more money on the meter. This meter was basically a retrofit of the old Mark VII's and any new meters produced would have a new board put in that had the sensitvity update. We are talking about 40ドル in parts at most. Leter on Dave would find out that Gold had been false reporting how much they had been spending to make the meters since the begining and had profited over 40 million dollars that not one penny was left of to be seen. He immedietly had all of they accounts taken over and all monies from meter sales would go to his special projects and no longer to Golden Era. Staff at Gold went months without getting paid as this was their major source of income. Now all the money that they were making off of meters would be spent to re-do all of the books and lectures that Dave was re-editing and the New Mark VIII Ultra E-Meters that he would have made in Japan under Russ Bellin, Tom Vorm and Tom Willis. Gold was cut out of all profits from any current sales and the only thing that could get ANY money fromwere the sales of the Classics. Single CD releases meant to be a huge mail order item. As part of the Classics there would be a CD system with special headphone system. It is no coincdence that the same circuit designer was the one able to design the new meter to CST's specifications! It took 4 years from the initial circuit design. But the new Mark VIII meters were designed & built. It cost over 4 million dollars just to design and produce the initial prototypes. Russ Bellin and his team of non-SO non Scienology designers, would come up with hundreds of different colors and designs and spend over a year with hudreds and hudreds of submissions and proposals to Dave M on the new meter. In the end, silver was the only color produced bythe factory and this is the color to be released initially. These meters were made in 2004 and at the time every single auditor at Gold was using the meter modified to fit in a Mark VII shell. Russ Bellin screwed up a major part of the design though and used a seriel connector in the back instead of USB. This was a cost saving shorcut and was silly as all major manufacturers had already announced that they would stop putting the serial connectors on newer computers. Why do think they wantedto get rid of 20,000 serial connectors? The new meters are supposed to be able to "silver certed" right over the Internet and will never have to been sent in to Gold. The new meters will also cost a tiny fraction of what older meters were costing to make. But, you will see a very small price descrease when they come out as they do not want the mew meters to seem inferior even thought they are made on an assembly linein Japan and cost les than a hundred dollars in the end to full manufacturer and they do not even get a sopt check or any type of rigorous checks that all previous meters were getting by "highly trained SO members." Gold was not allowed to have any part in making these meters and was kept completely in the dark on every aspect of their production until it was completed. This was to ensure that they in no way could sabotage it. The new meters are also heavily integrated into the new look/listen in systems that are being installed in all "new orgs". All orgs being newly built by Dave Miscavige have 2 cameras and a micrphone in every single auditing room. Even the cramming or correction rooms have these cameras installed. These have been designed to be unobtrusive and in most cases unseen to the naked eye. Inside pictures on the wall or vents, these cameras and mic are being fed into a hard drive video recorder that is also storing all meter information that is being recorded by the meter. Any questions regarding these systems by a public Scientologist would be answered with "it is a training tool for the auditors, so that they can be corrected." All of this info for each sesaiion that is being done in every org is archived and saved to DVDs. So now they not only have people confession on paper as recorded by the Auditor but on video with audio as well. There is also supposed to be a Scientology E-bay set-up that would essentially let you sell your old meters on the site so that 3rd world countries could buy them and get them at a fraction of the cost of a new Mark VIII ultra.