Creative Labs PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook ( 70SB053000012 )

This audio card was bought for only one purpose - to record "What U Hear" for a Vista PC. It doesn't work in that capacity and no properly working software appears to be forthcoming from Creative Labs. The card has proven worthless to me.

not the greatest, it works until you try to safely remove it from windows. then it blue screens. also installs a bunch of stuff at startup.

I bought this card as an upgrade to the built-in sound on an old Gateway laptop running Vista 32-bit. The sound is incredible with stunning clarity - like moving from standard to high-def. Downloaded and installed latest driver from Creative's website and after one reboot the new sound card was up and running. The first thing I noticed with this card was that the noise floor fell to the ground - quiets are dead quiet with no artifacts or distortion whatsoever - amazing!The card defaults to 16-bit @ 44 kHz (which has softer line-levels) so be sure to go in to the sound settings and select 24-bit with at least 44 kHz sampling rate then line-levels will be big and bold. The record "what you hear" feature is a big bonus too - works like a charm. I avoided all the software that comes with the card since I already have preferred apps for recording and playback - works seamlessly with those too.I'm very happy with this purchase!

I have been using an older laptop as a player for my collection of CDs backed-up to an external hard disk (using lossless Monkeys Audio compression). I used to connect the laptop to the HT receiver via the headphone port. The sound level was low (needed to up the receiver volume way beyond other sources) and the quality was OK.The card was easy to install, and I first tested it with analog connection to output stereo signal to the receiver. There was, anyway, an increase in signal level and in quality. But I was questioning, at this point, whether the card was worth the investment.I then got a toslink optical cable (reversible to mini-plugs on both sides) and connected via digital out to the receiver. I was afraid that digital out would only work for playing discs from the laptop's player. But no! All sources come out digital. And now it rocks. Music came alive, detailed, at a volume very close to my DVD player (a bit lower than the CD player though). I'm not sure I'd be able to perceive a difference from the same CD coming from the Marantz CD player.In summary, well worth the investment when using the digital out connection

I had the integrated sound go out on my Compaq V2000 notebook. I searched around for PCMCIA soundcards when I saw it would cost more than $400 to replace the motherboard of this 3 year old notebook.I read some good reviews of this card, and Amazon had the best price, so I went for it. It works fantastic. The sound quality is on an entirely different level than the integrated sound chips. With a good pair of headphones you will hear things you didn't even know were there, especially lows and highs. I also tried it with my speaker system, and DVDs sound awesome as well.Seeing how great the sound was, I was going to purchase a PCI version for my Desktop gaming PC, but intead grabbed a Rosewill PCMCIA to PCI adapter, which lets me use the Audigy 2 ZS on my Desktop as well. Again, it works and sounds great. Oblivion and FEAR sound simply amazing compared to the integrated audio.Very happy with the product, and would strongly recommend it to anyone.