No Sound Card for XPS 410

The XPS 410, now available only with Vista, does not offer a Creative Labs
sound card as an option. It is only listed for sale with integrated sound.
Creative does show Vista drivers on their web site, so I am wondering if
Dell found some problems with these drivers or whether they are waiting for
Creative to market a new card.

Does anyone have some information?

Larry

"Larry Hermann" wrote in message
...
The XPS 410, now available only with Vista, does not offer a Creative Labs
sound card as an option. It is only listed for sale with integrated sound.
Creative does show Vista drivers on their web site, so I am wondering if
Dell found some problems with these drivers or whether they are waiting
for Creative to market a new card.

Does anyone have some information?

Larry



Don't have any information, but the integrated sound is pretty darn good. I
haven't tried it yet, but it even has an Optical (TOSLink) out.

Tom

"Larry Hermann" wrote in message
...
The XPS 410, now available only with Vista, does not offer a Creative Labs
sound card as an option. It is only listed for sale with integrated sound.
Creative does show Vista drivers on their web site, so I am wondering if
Dell found some problems with these drivers or whether they are waiting
for Creative to market a new card.

Does anyone have some information?

Even when the XPS 410 shipped with XP, you didn't get a Creative
soundcard! What you had the option of ordering was a piece of software
that emulated an Audigy called Audigy Advanced MB. People are really
unhappy
with that. They thought they were getting a piece of Creative hardware.
See
here for details:

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...cending&page=1

Tom Lake

Not quite accurate Tom, when buying my 410 in early Dec, there were three
options for a sound card.

1. Integrated Sound
2. Sound Blaster SW (or some such wording), that meant you were getting the
equivilant of the Soundblaster card, but it was just software emulation.
3. X-fi Extreme Gamer

Option 3 at that time (pre Vista ) was an actual add-in X-fi card.

'perhaps' Dell has removed the X-fi card option for now due to issues with
Vista? and will make it an option again when the driver issue is resolved?

Sometime in the next week I'll be installing my Vista upgrade to Home
Premimun on my 410, and I'll find out myself if there's an issue with the
X-fi and Vista install.

I did run the Dell upgrade assistant DVD that came with my upgrade package,
and it prompted me to do two things.
1. Upgrade my BIOS to 2.2.0 (mine was at 2.1.0)
2. Remove the X-fi software.


"Tom Lake" wrote in message
...

"Larry Hermann" wrote in message
...
The XPS 410, now available only with Vista, does not offer a Creative
Labs sound card as an option. It is only listed for sale with integrated
sound. Creative does show Vista drivers on their web site, so I am
wondering if Dell found some problems with these drivers or whether they
are waiting for Creative to market a new card.

Does anyone have some information?

Even when the XPS 410 shipped with XP, you didn't get a Creative
soundcard! What you had the option of ordering was a piece of software
that emulated an Audigy called Audigy Advanced MB. People are really
unhappy
with that. They thought they were getting a piece of Creative hardware.
See
here for details:

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...cending&page=1

Tom Lake

Thanks for the replies. I do want a separate Creative sound card; I use
sound fonts and have some specialized audio software that works best with
the high end hardware. The link to the Creative site that Tom Lake supplied
is a real eye opener; thirteen pages of complaints about Creative and Dell
pointing fingers at each other over Vista with no solutions, but they do
seem to be on the verge of providing proper drivers. Think I'll wait a
couple of months.

Larry