It is always difficult to build a new PC configuration from scratch. It takes hours long of searching various quality/performance/price informations across the web and even talking to assemblers about their own experience. The match budget-quality-performance is tricky to master. Temptation arrives all the time, trying to drive you from your goal to get yourself a more and more powerfull machine. The run to power never ends unfortunately

Enough of blabla, here is what I went for (you are warned we are going into the technical layer):

1. CPU: Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.8 GHz
2. Thermaltake Spin Q cpu cooler
3. RAM: 4 Go of DDR3 G.Skill cas 8-8-8-24 (a 2×2Go set for Dual Channel)
4. Motherboard: MSI P55-CD53 with Overclocking Genie, no SLI (you will see it is not needed and it saves money)
5. Graphic Card: Zotac GTX 295
6. LED Samsung SyncMaster (expensive but excellent image quality comparing to LCD)
7. Antec three hundred case
8. Corsair Hx650 power source (put only the cables you need, no extra fuss)
9. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI (cheaper than PCI-e and no quality diference for the user)
10. Hard Drive Western Digital Velociraptor 300 Go (fastest drive you can find on the non professional market, programs load quicker, it really helps a lot in getting your computer faster). Good for being a system disk.
11. 1 To Western Digital Caviar Black mass storage disk

What do I prefer in this configuration? I would say the most surprising thing is that I am going MSI for the motherboard when a huge majority of people only stick to Asus. The 1 button push overclocking with perfect adjustment between memory bus speed, cpu ratio and Vcore voltage is a big hit as for me; it made me save many hours trying to find the right values so that the system is perfectly stable. HardCore overclockers will find the Over Clocking Genie a nice to have trick, offering you the idea of the right cpu ratio/mem bus/Vcore. If you need more than 3.5 GHz (base was 2.8) you can do it by yourself and will win time, beacause the Genie can point out the are in which to search.

P.S. : eventually, my system is not stable during cpu stress testing, it means the overclocking is not OK. This is a big drawback considering the MSI motherboard. As soon as the tests become cpu intensive i get blue screens or hangs. So, I would not recommend the MSI P55-CD53 for overclocking.

As a conclusion, here are some pictures of the used material:

Es gibt ja doch einige Unterschiede zwischen den {Mp3-Player nach denen man vergleichen sollte. Mein Player sollte auf jeden Fall einfach zu bedienen sein. Außerdem sollte er schön klein sein, damit ich ihn immer bei mir tragen kann und weiter hochwertig verarbeitet sein. Ob Samsung, Trekstor, Sony ist mir egal. Hauptsache die Qualität stimmt. Wie so oft informiere ich mich übers Internet, wenn ich eine neue Anschaffung tätigen möchte. So habe ich mich gerade über Mp3-Player informiert und diverse Seiten durchstöbert. Neben den gängigen Preisvergleichsseiten hab ich auch eine spezialisierte Seite: mp3-player-tests.de gefunden, welche den Vergleich diverser Player zum Musik abspielen vereinfacht indem Sie die Ergebnisse verschiedene Testberichte übersichtlich darstellt. Auf der suche bin ich auf den Creative Zen X-Fi MP3-Player 8 GB schwarz gestoßen. Er scheint ein sehr guter Mp3-Player zu sein. Zumindest im Vergleich mit anderen Playern. Der Creative Zen X-Fi MP3-Player 8 GB schwarz ist zumindest recht schön und scheint hochwertig verarbeitet zu sein. Ich glaub ich werde mir diesen Player bald zulegen. Zudem scheint er den Bewertungen nach zu urteilen sehr preiswert zu sein.

ZiiLABS, subsidiary of Creative, announced its 3rd generation media-rich application processor ZMS-08 that brings 1080p Blu-ray quality H.264 playback to low energy devices.

ZiiLABS's ZMS-08 Processor

The lower power system-on-chip is packed with impressive array of features:

• • Full HD 1080p high-profile H.264 video decode
  • Simultaneous H.264 encode and decode at 720p
  • 1080p 24fps encode
  • Accelerated OpenGL® ES 2.0 3D graphics at up to 1 Gpixels/sec
  • 2D processing, compositing, image processing
  • Advanced Xtreme Fidelity™ X-Fi Audio effects
  • Low-power 1GHz ARM Cortex processor

The ZMS-08 is aimed at small form factor devices that enable content currently accessed via the PC to spread to mobile and low-energy devices.

Imagine that, Blu-ray quality video, crystal clear video conferencing experience and game console-like 3D and sound effects on future tablets, smartphones and set-top boxes.

When I bought my first PC in 1997, it came with a Yamaha ISA sound card. The PCs that I bought after that all had integrated audio in the motherboard and I never bothered to install a dedicated sound card.I wasn’t an audiophile nor I didn’t really care for the FPS improvements the Creative Audigy cards showed over the integrated audio cards.

This is year 2009. I use an Asus P5B-E motherboard in my current PC. It is pretty old. Intel P965 chipset. When did it come out? Last decade? LOL

Anyways, it has a SoundMAX AD1988 codec as the integrated audio solution.I never had Windows XP installed in my PC. I only installed Windows Vista on it and now I run Windows 7.

So now to the problem.

All the problems came up when I started using the microphone (mic). For some reason, the mic didn’t work. I first thought it was a problem with the mic, but apparently it wasn’t as it worked fine on another computer. I downloaded the latest available driver from Asus website, and guess what? The mic worked with the new driver! So it WAS just a driver problem. Now that the problem was solved, I could chat on Skype using the mic. But the new driver introduced a new problem.

When I turned the volume up to around 50% (btw I need more when I watch movies!), there was an irritating noise coming from the speakers. I thought it maybe the speakers running old (they are from year 2003!!!). But when I plugged the headphones, the same thing! So it wasn’t the speakers. Funny thing was that this happened only after I updated the drivers. I didn’t have any problem with the default Windows High Definition Driver.

But voice chatting was important to me so I tried to ignore the noise.

Now Windows 7 is here and it’s the same frigging issue. With the default Windows driver, the mic doesn’t work but the noise isn’t there. With the most recent driver, the mic works but the noise is there. I need mic and I don’t need the noise.

Since I bought my Creative Fatal1ty headset, I was using it more than my speakers, and now the noise was so irritating that I made up my mind to buy a new sound card. I looked around for something cheap on Ebay, but all of the reasonably good models were way beyond my reach. Then I found one auction where they sold the X-Fi XtremeGamer card for a mere $30 plus $16 for shipping. It wasn’t brand new though. A brand new XtremeGamer card here costs almost $140. DUH!

So I ordered the card and waited for like 3 weeks and finally it arrived yesterday. I was ecstatic!

Without taking a shower, I got into business. I installed the card in the bottom most PCI slot. It was still located around the middle of the motherboard. There was another one PCI slot I could install it to, but it was just below the video card. There was another PCI slot, but the huge heatsink of my video card covered it.

I went into BIOS, disabled Integrated Audio and came to Windows. Something I expected to happen, didn’t happen. Windows didn’t detect the new hardware. The sound icon in the system tray was showing that there was no audio device present in the system. I was a little worried. Anyways, I downloaded the driver for the card; it was around 50MB in size. When I tried to install it, it gave me an error saying there wasn’t any compatible devices detected and installation failed. I was like WTF! I was a little worried thinking that I was played by the Ebay seller sending a dead card. Anyways, I quickly installed it in my dad’s PC, and to my relief, it detected the card and when I installed the driver, it worked fine!

So what could have been the problem with my PC? I checked the installation of the card and found out that the card wasn’t fit properly in the slot. I tried to fit it, but I couldn’t. Something was blocking it. I bet it was the stupid casing. So with hesitancy, I tried the other available slot and it fit into the slot properly. When I came back to Windows, it detected the new card and when I installed the driver and rebooted, it worked! W00t!

I’m still not so happy that the audio card is right below the video card. It’s only millimeters away from touching the heatsink. I hope the heat won’t kill the audio card!!

Anyways, it was late at night and we played COD4 and I couldn’t play with the card much. The mic works and the noise isn’t there. The major problems solved. I hope it doesn’t introduce any new problems though. I will play with it more when I get back home today from work.

If you want to read a review of the card, check this link out: Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer Review at bit-tech

P.S.

I never thought I would buy a dedicated sound card. Something is seriously wrong with me! LOL

Si eres fiel amante y seguidor de los reproductores multimedia y vives buscando constantemente información en internet acerca de esta clase de equipos presta mucha atención entonces al siguiente post, ya que hemos tenido conocimiento de un nuevo elemento denominado Creative Zen X-Fi2 que se destaca por llevar en su interior una pantalla táctil de 3 pulgadas.

Entre las principales características del Creative Zen X-Fi2 tenemos:

• Una pantalla táctil de 3 pulgadas con resolución de 320 x 240 pixeles
• Salida de televisión integrada
• Dispone de un altavoz
• Capacidad para soportar formatos WMA, MP3, AAC, FLAC, WMV, DivX, XviD y MPEG-4
• Tecnología X-Fi encargada de mejorar el sonido considerablemente
• Peso aproximado de 75 gramos

Si estas buscando un equipo que tenga una excelente capacidad de almacenamiento, pues déjame decirte que el Creative Zen X-Fi2 ofrece 8 GB-16GB y 32 GB de almacenamiento.

Sus precios obviamente varían de acuerdo a la capacidad de almacenamiento, donde lo podrás encontrar desde 130 dólares hasta los 230 dólares aproximadamente.

Pese a que en el mercado podemos encontrar equipos de esta naturaleza bajo mejores especificaciones técnicas esta propuesta no deja de ser interesante si tenemos en cuenta su diseño y algunas de sus especificaciones.

Vía | ActualidadGadget

I’ve had a Creative X-Fi card for a while and it worked a treat in Windows XP. However, thanks to Creative basically being dickheads, drivers weren’t available for Linux – or they were so buggy as to be unusable. I could get it working under OSS, but there were other problems there. When I switched to Linux full-time, I ended up taking out the X-Fi card and replacing it with an ancient Audigy card and made do. Creative finally gave in last year and released their driver to the community and the Linux developers got to work. An ALSA driver has now been released, and it’s expected to ship by default with the next release of Alsa.

If you want to set up your X-Fi in the meantime however, I found an excellent installation guide here, which I used myself and so far all seems to be working well. The only teeny problem I encountered (which was entirely my fault for not reading the article properly) was in switching the default sound card from the old Audigy to the X-Fi. As explained in the How To, you just need to open gnome-sound-properties and make sure everything is set to Alsa. Aside from that, everything went swimmingly!

I have to say that the way Creative has behaved over the Linux drivers is pretty shoddy. They were supposed to working on them about 3 years ago, then shelved development so they could work on Vista drivers. A horrendously buggy, 64-bit only version was released which was worse than useless, then they basically washed their hands of the whole situation. If they’d worked with the Linux community in the first place, this driver would probably have been released about 3 years ago. I seriously doubt if I will ever buy another Creative sound card and I was a pretty loyal customer of theirs for a long time.

Creative Labs is one of the originators in offering premium aftermarket sound cards for your PC. Since their inception they have greatly elaborated their product line to include an array of new product lines including: X-fi, Mp3 Players, Speakers, WebCams, Headphones, Headsets & Peripherals. Creative is a must stop shop for any gamers that are looking to bring their gaming experience to the next level. Check out our Creative Labs coupons and special offer links to save even more.

Are You Interested in Creative Zen X-Fi 16 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver) Coming Soon I find this from Amazon I will That interes, You that Agree?.

BuZZ from Customer Shopping

Promises A Lot But Delivers Disappointment
I used to have a couple of creative MUVO players from years ago. They were great and worked extremely well as USB drive/MP3 Players. One of them was even accidentally washed in the laundry but still worked perfectly fine years after that.

Unfortunately for this unit, I’m not nearly as impressed. It promises a lot and sounds incredibly cool, but there are too many points where it fails to deliver.

I’ve used a Sony Walkman 8GB player for a couple of years and it has been fantastic. I was looking to buy the new model but it starts at $300 and stil won’t come out for another couple of months. I’ve never been much of an IPod fan, however, I bought one after this unit failed me and I’ve been extremely happy with the IPod and IPod software.

So anyway, I’m no stranger to MP3 players. I’ll try to draw comparisons for you where I can.

1. The unit would crash and need to be reset. This is the BIGGEST problem because if it’s not 100% stable, it’s worthless.

2. The software does not function well and lacks a lot of necessary features. The first problem I ran into was trying to put songs into albums. This was much easier and more flexible with the IPod software. It lets you add source folders, but it will not see the contents. For some reason, it can see a few songs or maybe 1 or 2 albums, but just can’t seem to see the other 10gb of stuff in that folder.

The software is a real hassle. It doesn’t work properly, hard to manage and impossible to organize in some key ways, and lacks some basic necessary features.

3. The sound is not bad but not crystal clear. I would prefer a better equalizer than the Xi-Fi feature. I don’t know if it uses more battery power for sound enhancement but it seemed to zap some of the battery life when I left it on.

Basically all it does is increase the presence and bass. The equalizer can be customized which is something my IPod doesn’t allow. However, the EQ is hard to dial in. They should have simply added a slider for the presence.

The headphones seem to be pretty good and stick in your ears very well, unlike the headphones that came equipped with my IPod. Unfortunately, they pretty much block out all sound so if you’re jogging and a car is honking at you, you’re pretty much mashed potatoes.

Sound quality is extremely important in an audio device like this, so I would say it’s a pretty big deal.

4. One of the coolest things about my Sony Walkman is that I could directly copy folders to my device, then I could browse those folders from the device. That was extremely cool and much easier than fooling with playlists, albums, etc…

You can copy folders to the Zen Xi-Fi, however, you cannot browse them from the device. In fact, it either sticks them in messed up “unknown” albums or ignores them all together. Worthless feature.

5. You cannot really create a playlist from the device. You can create “On The Go” playlists on an IPod, but on this device you cannot. It lets you create a playlist on the fly, but adds all the songs from an album.

6. I didn’t have a chance to really play with the wireless feature much because the unit crashed so often and I sent it back after just a few days. What I did get to use of it was rather disappointing. It’s really not nearly as cool as they make it sound.

7. The little buttons are annoying, and for the most part, only 5 of the 9 even serve any function. I would prefer the old Zen style navigation pad.

8. You can assign shortcuts, however, it’s useless for what it does.

There are a few other things that vexed me about this product. It was a huge let down because I was always fond of Creative Labs products and expected at least a stable, flexible device.

I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth now and probably won’t bother trying them out later when they’ve worked out some of the bugs – if they ever care to get around to it.

For all the cool things this the Zen Xi-Fi potentially could be, at the price point it’s offered, it’s just a huge disappointment.

There is a LOT of potential in this device, but potential is worthless if the company doesn’t make it a priority to tap that potential. So far, Creative doesn’t seem to be responding or offering any upgrades to the software or device to fix the problems.

Creative Zen X-Fi 32 gb Video MP3 Player w/ Wireless LAN
Great product was originaly concerned with fm and older os but comes with latest update installed. although yet to test wi fi connection hope to soon.

love it
I’ve had this player for several months now and I love it! It goes with me everywhere. I bought it to replace my old Zen Vision M and I’m not disappointed.
It a great size and weight and it’s also pretty. Battery life is not bad. I’ve found the external speaker to be far more useful than I had ever imagined it would be. The overall device sound quality is Excellent. the head phones are nice even though I keep losing the little silicone tips/buds. the player should have come with a 100 pack of replacement buds for people like me. I don’t use the crystalizer or the wifi…although I’m sure they have their uses, I find them both unnecessary and I’d be just as happy without either. The Card slot is a nice thought but I haven’t found it to add as much joy and usefulness to the player as I had hoped. It’s best to use this slot for picture transfers/storage. I love that it uses a regular usb cable to connect to the computer so I don’t have to buy some “special” cable that will only work with this device. I am also delighted to be able to use it with my Audible books which is it’s main occupation in my world (love my books).Video is terrific and it works great with Amazon video downloads. In a perfect world, I’m sure the buttons would be a bit larger but I’m not really annoyed with them the way they are. The software and user interface is very much like my Vision: M so I’m used to its quirks whatever they are, if they even exist. There is always room for improvement with every product, and everyone is an authority on how to design something to make it better. I suppose my main complaint would be the long time it takes to convert certain types of video and also that there is a little software quirk that makes the “what do you want to do?” window pop up on the computer while I’m charging. All in all…It does what I bought it to do and it does all those things quite well.
It’s a great little player.

About Creative Zen X-Fi 16 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver) detail

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1652 in Consumer Electronics
• Size: 16 GB
• Color: Silver
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: ZXFI16GBBK
• Original language: English, French
• Dimensions: .50″ h x 2.20″ w x 3.30″ l, .20 pounds
• Display size: 2.5

Features

• A firmware bug could result in the player locking when playing the FM radio; to fix the problem, upgrade the latest firmware (1.04.08) posted on support.creative.com
• Capacity: 16 GB (4,000 songs or 60 hours of video); up to 30 hours of continuous audio playback or 5 hours of continuous video playback on one charge
• 2.5-inch TFT LCD with 320 x 240 pixel resolution: 16.7 million colors
• Supports MP3, WMA, AAC5, WAV (ADPCM), Audible 2,3,4 audio formats; MJPEG, WMV, MPEG-4 video (including DivX and XviD); and JPEG photo formats
• 1-year limited hardware / 90 days service warranty

Related Product

Source From wordpress9-20
Bye Bye
Cheers and Care

Now I find Creative Zen X-Fi 32 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver) I make this product appeal to young people

BuZZ from Customer Shopping

good music, useless wifi and terrible customer service
I was happy to avoid the Apple Empire buying this player which was cheaper than their 16 GB product. The music sounds great and I prefer the buttons over the circle of the IPod. I’m able to easily switch songs while I work out. Software is easy to use. However…I have to say that the customer service of Creative is the worst. After a few months of simply being content to just use the USB, I tried to hook up the wireless connection and nothing works. Also, when they verified my chat account email, they added “EMAIL:” to my address, so I can’t log in. I have tried numerous times to reset my settings, but the same thing happens.

All the Creative tech support said through email in both cases was to refer to their web page for instructions. I finally found a tech phone number and the recording said I was ineligible for phone support because I had owned the Zen for over 2 months ( they offered help for $12/half hour). I still have not received any help through email-they just send me “active listening” responses like “I understand you are having trouble with such and such”. Then again it sends me to a general how-to link on the Creative site. I’m fed up and will never again buy a creative product.

Good thing I can’t get chat to work anyway, the tedious keypad for inputting letters would drive me insane…6 clicks for the letter g, etc.

Zen X-Fi 16 GB
This is a great MP3 player. The X-Fi feature is not a great sound improvement over non X-Fi, and the wireless lan is nice but it is not that hard to hook it up with a USB cord. I never use these features. The FM radio works great too. Highly recommend this player over IPOD.

its a m3p player
small thin just right like the sd card slot ,no need to use software the speaker sound really good , difficult to charge though it seems to have a software problem

About Creative Zen X-Fi 32 GB Video MP3 Player with Wireless LAN and Built-In Speaker (Black/Silver) detail

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1759 in Consumer Electronics
• Size: 32 GB
• Color: Silver
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: ZXFI32GBBK
• Dimensions: .50″ h x 2.20″ w x 3.30″ l, .20 pounds
• Display size: 2.5

Features

• A firmware bug could result in the player locking when playing the FM radio; to fix the problem, upgrade the latest firmware (1.04.08) posted on support.creative.com
• Capacity: 32 GB (8,000 songs or 120 hours of video); up to 30 hours of continuous audio playback or 5 hours of continuous video playback on one charge
• 2.5-inch TFT LCD with 320 x 240 pixel resolution: 16.7 million colors
• Supports MP3, WMA, AAC5, WAV (ADPCM), Audible 2,3,4 audio formats; MJPEG, WMV, MPEG-4 video (including DivX and XviD); and JPEG photo formats
• 1-year limited hardware / 90 days service warranty

Related Product

Source From wordpress9-20
Bye Bye
Cheers and Care

We don’t usually delve deep into the guts of PC hardware, however this motherboard deserves a special mention. New from Asus, the Rampage II GENE motherboard is only 24×24cm, but has room for three (yes, three) graphic cards. It’s CrossFireX and SLI compatible, so you’ll make full use of the triple GPUs, and comes with steller on-board audio in the form of X-Fi technology. Great if you want to build yourself a mini gaming rig, but we can’t wait to start seeing media center PCs with enough juice to run Crysis.

Non son per niente soddisfatto della mia Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality Championship Edition. Integra 64 MB di X-Ram, che dovrebbe servire SOLO nei giochi per immagazzinare i dati per una parte (mai tutta…) della decodifica audio. Purtroppo i giochi che gli sfruttano si contano sulle dita di una mano, e dei nuovi in uscita non mi sembra qualcuno gli supporti… Come se non bastasse, ho scoperto solo dopo averla comprata che esiste una confusione colossale tra i vari modelli. Sebbene abbiano lo stesso nome, in base al periodo di commercializzazione o al software allegato certi permettono di sfruttare il chip audio per una parte della decodifica di Dolby Digital o DTS, altri no. C’è una tabella da qualche parte sul sito Creative. I driver non vengono più aggiornati da diversi mesi, e per il supporto a Windows Vista in modo decente (nel senso che funzioni tutto) si è dovuto aspettare parecchio. Ancora adesso, nel caso di una nuova installazione software (anche per Windows XP), non è possibile affidarsi solo agli aggiornamenti presenti sul sito, in quanto manca la console THX, che invece è presente sul CD dei driver. Oltre agli aggiornamenti per i programmi singoli (driver, console, player ecc.) non c’è un pacchetto unico che comprende tutto e permetta di selezionare cosa installare e cosa no (come si fa da cd scegliendo “personalizzata”). Problema minore okay, però… E cosa dire della funzione “auto-aggirnamento software” (permette di rilevare in automatico cosa è presente sul pc dell’utente e in quale versione, indicato se sono disponibili aggiornamenti) che ormai da anni (minimo DUE) funziona solo con IE6/7? Se si prova con un altro browser viene visualizzato un messaggio di errore che invita a riprovare tra qualche tempo quando il supporto sarà esteso… Dal punto di vista hardware poi non ci siamo. Il chip sarà anche schermato rispetto all’Emu 10K2 della Audigy 2 ZS (si trova dentro una scatoletta metallica sulla scheda), però le connessioni sono diminuite invece di aumentare. E’ ricomparasa la porta MIDI (nel modello summenzionato c’era una firewire 400), i connettori jack sono 4 (prima 6), con audio digitale e microfono insieme! Quindi o l’uno o l’altro!! Non c’è più il connettore SPDIF. Che me ne faccio della porta MIDI??? Se la sfruttassi mi sarei comprato la versione con il frontalino da 5,25 che ha anche altri ingressi/uscite utili per i musicisti! Non questa! Si chiama FATAL1TY!!! Perché serve per G-I-O-C-A-R-E! Manca anche tutta la parte “accessoria”. Nessun cavo, nessun manuale (solo PDF). CD con driver e basta. Altra mancanza GRAVISSIMA e IMPERDONABILE. Manca un semplice ed economico connettore sulla scheda (sul pcb) per poter usufruire delle porte audio (microfono e cuffie) frontali del case… NON C’E’ nulla del genere, e nemmeno un adattatore in vendita, bisogna costruirselo!! Ma stiamo scherzando? Su una scheda indirizzata alla fascia “entusiast” del mercato? Insomma, un passo indietro enorme per Creative. Forse sta per uscire dal mercato delle schede audio, dopo anni dalla presentazione di X-Fi non si profila nessun aggiornamento all’orizzonte. Si sono limitati a presentare la stessa scheda con chip x-fi con un connettore PCI-Express al posto del tradizionale PCI… VOGLIO la decodifica Dolby Digital e DTS su tutti i modelli, rivoglio i connettori audio separati, la firewire (stavolta 800), l’uscita/entrata digitale (separata dal microfono) e lo stramaledetto connettore per il frontale del case!

I wasn’t always an Apple junkie….okay I kind of was; but before I jumped on the iPod band-wagon I was in love with the MP3 players Creative was putting out.  Creative is known more for their superb sound and video cards, so you can only imagine what sound and video they get into  a pocket-size device.  The sound was always especially amazing and blew away anything my iPod produces.

I figured I would look into what Creative has been up to lately, since it’s been quite some time since we last “spoke”.

Their new Zen X-Fi looks pretty damn awesome to me. Video, X-Fi sound, Wireless LAN…the works, but the feature I am most impressed with has to be the X-Fi Audio. Anyone who knows a little something about computer audio knows that Creative’s X-Fi system was created to help restore what compression does to your music in MP3 format.  It makes the music on your MP3 player or home computer sound good again, and believe me it works.  After listening to nothing but MP3’s for so long, you forget what you are missing.  Listen to your favorite song in MP3 form and then go find it on the CD you ripped it from…..now do you realize how much you have been missing?

Being an audio junkie, I’d actually be afraid to get my hands on one of these bad boys.  Creative might just be able to convert me back.  If you aren’t an iPod/iPhone zombie like myself, you really should look into this little piece of equipment that I am sure creates musical bliss.

Make Noise!

The best thing about my Desktop computer is its 5.1 surround sound system. It gives such an enhancement to my enjoyment of music, films and games – plus the Line-In and Mic sockets are  high quality with no nasty buzz or machine interference evident on recordings made via their wholly holy holes

The PC has been on its last legs for a long time (about 16 months) so it’s fabulous to be recommended a couple of items from Creative that would allow me to transport a rich and engaging, fully immersive audio to my newer, fitter laptops without having to dump, move or replace my current speakers.

This is the Soundblaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 and  this is the Soundblaster Live 24 Bit External ; refurbished, this latter model only costs a tadge more than a game….slightly less, actually, than the full RRP for the Collector’s Edition of the forthcoming “Empire : Total War” which is the lastest iteration from a franchise I favour and that benefits more than most from 3D sound.

I hope the game will only require a one-time internet activation as my best Tosh‘ is an offliner.

Hmm – “I Want ! I Want ! I Want !”

Brat.

Dell’s XPS 730x brings a “minor” change in the core system being used in their XPS 700 series PCs. The main difference between the old and new is that the new Intel X58 chipset and Core i7 processor are being used. With the change you can see notible increase in speed over the 730 (without the little “x”) model.

The XPS 730x uses the same large and hefty case that makes upgrading really easy. Direct buyers from Dell have a good selections of upgrades they can add to the system if they want more than the base system. There is a bad side to these upgrades: the XPS 730x has a higher than typical cost for a performance gaming PC. Another negative is that the graphics card is relatively weak when considering the cost.

Some key points on what it includes:

• Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core Desktop Processor
• 3GB PC3-8500 DDR3 Memory
• 500GB 7200rpm SATA HDD
• 16x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Audio Card
• Gigabit Ethernet x2
• 8x USB 2.0, 2x FireWire, eSATA
• Vista Home Premium 64-bit, McAfee Security Center

Source: About.com