I agree with hi and lo, and, I have to admit, I am kind of at a loss as to why anyone would think this pricing scheme is OK. When you buy the most basic "model", you are actually buying all of those pre-amps, even if you can't use them. AETA sold you the complete hardware package (excepting timecode, I guess) and presumably made a profit doing so. To actually charge you more money to use the pres you already paid for is simply ridiculous. This is not like tonedeaf's analogy where the automaker has different engines available (4- or 6-, or turbo 6-cylinder, for example) and you pay more for a better engine that also costs more to produce. In this case, everyone is paying for the turbo 6, but you can't actually use the top two cylinders or the turbo unless you pay some extra premium. Lame.
This is silly and written without any knowledge it seems.
The mic. pre-amps are usable on *all* versions - on the 0-track version all 10 inputs are fully available to the user - just that in this configuration the unit is a mixer only and doesn't record.
All the software options do is to enable the number of recording tracks - everything else is fully usable.
To answer some other things...
What I do has always been on my sig. and the Sound-Link bit was added as soon as I acquired the company.
If the US AETA dealer wants to contact me, I am very happt to let him have the master of my price list file, so he can overwrite with US prices and insert his own details.
Regarding the Nagra VI battery - there has been a load of rubbish talked about this and a video which promotes something that is actually quite dangerous. Yes, the pricing is high, but it's reasonable for a high end product that is made in small qualtities. And Nagra *do* offer a re-battery service if anyone has a battery pack that fails. I presume they will even upgrade a pack to the high capacity version, I assume, as the box is the same for both versions.