Dave,
It's a bit of both....
Nortel have tightened up the database to prevent corruption.
And the nice CTI driver won't allow individual turning on and off on the monitoring of a phone set.
I don't know about 8.8 but i suspect that it would be the same as the nortel database is the same.
I've been trying to find out if anyone else has this or it's just me.
It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you.