Ok before i start i want to make sure u know im new to all this dvd burners stuff so please excuse my ignorance 
Right, first off i got givent he 824k/00 today by my dad, installed it any everything, it shows up in windows device manager as a 824P, and according to nero system info its on the 1.2P firmware. Now as i said i dont know about dvd burners and that, so are there any drivers i should upgrade to seeing as its just using the default windows xp ones dated in 2001! The philips site seems to be completely useless and i cant find a thing on there, after having read on here that this type of dvd burner has been discontinued im a bit annoyed at philips, they seem to be pretty crap at customer support.
Secondly, as far as firmware goes, im completely confused, ive read lots of posts in this forum and looked around sites getting all the different firmwares i can apparently use, but i just dont know which one to use. I would have thought upgrading to the philips 824k/00 P3.3 would be the best option seeing as thats likely to be the most compatible and it is the latest (last) firmware directly from philips, but ive only read of people upgrading using the 824k/40 P3.3, which is surely different, and everyone who upgrades using that seems to want to then refer to the P1.2, why??? And if 3.3 is causing people problems is there anything between 1.2 and 3.3 that anyone would recommend using?
I’m a bit cautious as to flashing the firmware to a Benq drive, although ive read from enough people its safe, to be honest id rather just upgrade to a philips firmware to be on the safe side, but what exactly is dual layer support and why is everyone going mad about it in the latest benq firmware anyway?
I’m not even too sure whether i want to upgrade the firmware anymore after reading a lot of what people have said and how most people seem to want to go back to 1.2 after flashing to 3.3 which i dont understand unless the fact they used 824k/40 firmware instead of 824k/00 firmware has anything to do with it? But as i said i dont have a clue about any of this and i would really be appreciative if someone could fill in the many blanks for me 
Oh and how can i backup firmware if i do decide to try an upgrade just incase?
and also everyone just says to flash to benq firmware no matter what, but no one seems to explain why benq is so much better (other than saying for DL, and i have no idea what that does either) or why the philips firmware is bad at all? Plus as ive said the people ive read about flash to 3.3 using a different firmware model number than their proper model number, and then want to revert afterwards but does that make any difference in that would 3.3 be better(or even work) if they used the proper firmware version? everyone seems to answer this by saying “use benq”…