I am considering purchasing one or both of these from Oreilly or Amazon.

Could anyone who has read this tell me if it's process covers through 2.2.1 firmware?

I am looking to recover some data from my phone before restoring. It has been locked up ever since I tried to install activateMMS2G on my 3G.

When they call it "Rough Cuts" I always get the impression that doesn't have all the updates that the print version has. Of course the digital version would be easier for them to update, so surely they did. Someone let me know if this is worthwhile.

Its all in NerveGas book, you get online links aswell. It is covering verything up to iPhone OS 3. To follow it, you should be really comfortable with unix and stuff ;-)

Do you really need forensic tools or just want to recover mist of the data like photos?

One mor, are you on Windows or on a Mac?

I have both windows XP and mac OS.

I watched the hour long webcast Nervegas did for Oreilly and I generally understand what he was doing. I've have minimal experience with Terminal, but if I have to learn, I have to learn.

As far as what I'd like to recover, yes mostly just photos and basic stuff like that. I haven't had much luck with the other free apps suggested to me, so I was going to give the forensics angle a go.

Do you have another suggestion before I dive into the forensics ?
What I have tried so far is outlined here in the original thread I posted:

http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/f127/81023.htm