Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum eX

Pros: Great specs and concept
Cons: Install failed on my Windows 2000 PC

This is an impressive concept with a lot of hardware for the money. Web comments about the Audigy series were generally positive, so I bought the eX for use with home audio recording, expecting it's reported 2-4 ms latency with ASIO would be dandy for...

Pros: Big step up in PC sound quality from past mass-market products.
Cons: Burned audio CDs still bland; invasive Creative software, crash-prone install, silly remote.

Despite prior dire warnings about how the Audigy boards have been problematic on Dell computers, I bought and installed the eX on my Dell Dimension XPS B1000r (1 GHz Pentium III w/ 256MB RDRAM) running along on Windows Me, and which about 14 or 15 months...