Creative's best efforts in desktop audio slide their way into the side of a laptop.

Better sound for your laptop from Creative, plus the little white lies about its heritage exposed.

A decent software bundle, but has a low resolution and no integrated microphone.

They may be extremely comfortable, but there are quite a few flaws in Creative’s Fatality branded gaming headphones.

Under the guidance of Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, Creative gives mice a minor tune-up.

Anyone who has heard of the idea of noise-cancelling headphones would agree the idea sounds terrific.

When we last looked at the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (the Platinum Ex, June 2003) we were highly impressed by the soundcard and its many functions, but felt that there was perhaps too much on offer, leaving you with many unwanted, unused and unwarranted inclusions.

The RADEON 9600 is a funny beast. Technologically it is quite advanced, although it suffers from slightly limited memory bandwidth.

Think of sound cards and chances are you're probably thinking of Creative. Thanks to its phenomenally successful Sound Blaster line of cards, Creative is easily the leader of consumer PC audio. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum Ex is the latest in this range, and is by far the most feature rich. The question is do you need most of these features?

The original Audigy brought ASIO drivers, SB1394 (IEEE 1394) and EAX Advanced HD to the masses, but it was criticised because some people felt betrayed by the 24-bit 96kHz specification, which referred to the DACs rather than the sampling rate.

sound card

Sound Card

Creative has raised the stakes again with the Audigy, this time from 16- to 24-bit sampling.

The SB Live! is one of the most commonly used cards, and as such, is a good yardstick for the performance of the new generation of sound cards.

Creative has enjoyed a long reign as the driving force in consumer-grade PC audio for the better part of a decade.

The Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1 is the latest sound card from Creative Labs, the company that has dominated the consumer-level computer audio card market for most of the last decade.

MP3 with full Environmental Audio support is only part of what this card can offer. Gamers will find this card supports most of the popular standards including DirectSound 3D, EAX 1.0 and above, A3D 1.0 (in software) and Sound Blaster.

Webcams have been around for some time and they are now emerging as a truly accessible and useful device.