So what's the deal with this? From what I've picked up it works the same as accessport except you program everything? Seems like an easy way to kill your car if you don't know what you're doing? I dunno, I've just been hearing the word pop up here and there on the forums and don't really know anything about it nor how long it has been around.
I think you can also data log with it too though. I am not confidant enough to play around too much with the ECU yet. I paid the cash, got street tuner for the accessport and I am learning about that now. Even such, you could still screw your car with ST, but it does include some guidelines, base maps for various combos and tuning advise.
Ok so I will continue with me newb question, whats the signifigance of data logging? Is it just to see where you can improve your tune?
Well data logging is good for a lot of things...improving your tune, diagnosing problems, checking for weak links (heat issues, knock, etc). You can learn a lot from your engine just by looking at what it is currently doing. Yeah it is true that if you don't know what you are looking at it is just jibberish, but if you start having a problem and you have a previous log to compare it to, it can be helpful.
The OpenPort itself is nothing but a fancy cable that lets you read from and write to Subaru ECUs. It's (mostly) used with OpenECU related software.
Datalogging is like a report card (not complete but darn close) Without it you cant tell what you decided to do is for the better or worst.