Well, I took delivery of my CVT MINI on 30 October 2003, and don't know what software version it came with. But I agree with all here who have said the car is really really really slow off the line and I absolutely hate that (valnmike had excellent comments on that at the start of the posting). So much that I am thinking of what next car to get. However, I absolutely love driving the car once it gets going, and for the reasons already stated here, i.e., taking the twisties you don't have to brake or driving in stop and go traffic you don't have to brake. You can be accelerating strong and if you need to slow or stop, you can take your foot off the accelerator and coast to slow down -- its great. I started driving in manual mode one week ago, and that is a real blast, except again, with the off the line performance. You guys may be right in that this problem is probably the ECU chip. I heard there is also a chip that controls the CVT too, but they may be the same chip, I don't know. I would hate to give this car up, but that is how bad the chip performance is, when I have to give serious consideration to changing cars.
I am leaning toward keeping this car, but go back and forth on that. Hopefully MINI is working on this problem. I don't know how the more current chip upgrades perform.