Well, I’ve Bought My Last Dell

Stum­bled onto the Dell Sup­port forums while rum­mag­ing the sup­port area. Sure enough, there was a long assed thread on the Sound­Blaster Live card I got. Part of the rea­son I spent a few hun­dred more on the 4550 instead of the 2350 was the sep­a­rate sound blaster audio card and an nvida video card as opposed to built in stuff on the moth­er­board. Turns out the Sound Blaster is a pro­pri­etary Dell thing made in who knows where and not sup­ported by Cre­ative Labs at all. So I have two options, buy a real card or go back to XP. I went to Sta­ples and bought a SB PCI512 card. It is a step down from the live, but bud­get only allowed a $50 expen­di­ture. I know I could have got the Live for fifty online some­where, but I wanted the easy return option of a neigh­bor­hood brick and mor­tar store just in case the card wasn’t the prob­lem. It was. The new card works fine, I’m happy now over­all, but unhappy with Dell.