This USB external card does what I need perfectly: at a very reasonable price, I now get CD-quality sound from online music radio stations (the corporate FM stations here in Houston are just too pathetic for words) and without ever having to install any additional software on my PC, so zero noticeable resource drain. Sure if I ever decide to do surround sound (unlikely in my already-cramped home office) or do some cross-medium recording (unlikely due to my lack of time) I may regret not buying a more expensive card---but in the meantime I'm VERY happy with this sleek little baby. Simplicity, functionality, and cost-effectiveness...I couldn't ask for more!

And yeah, the sleek silver casing and flashing blue light are pretty cool too.

BTW, some awesome Net stations with zero commercials, awesome playlists, and free too: di.fm (the classical and modern jazz channels), kexp.org, radioparadise.com

Very poor sound Quality (Rating: 1.00)
Review : I bought this to add to my laptop to connect into my HiFi, The sound quality using the line-in was excuricatingly bad...

I'm returning it!

Better Notebook Sound (Rating: 4.00)
Review : Although not as good, as the Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster Audigy2 External Sound Card, it gets the job done. My only problem is the lack of a SPDIF output for speaker systems. If you have a receiever that supports optical or even speakers it does transform a laptop into a stereo system. For the price I like it.

I Use it to Record Voice for Presentations (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I use this adapter to record presentations through our P.A. system right to my laptop. You can run any audio through the RCA and it compresses and records directly to MP3. It's a great way to burn presentations right to CD. I haven't tried to use it to beef up my computer sound system, but for $40 it was well worth being able to record voices in a small file size.

good for laptops/notebooks (Rating: 4.00)
Review : I own a laptop computer which has decent onboard sound capabilities, but I recently discovered that it only has one audio input -- a microphone jack -- which is mono, and therefore is not suitable for recording stereo sources. Due to the fact that there is no way to install a "real" sound card in it, I needed an external solution. This USB sound system from Creative fits the bill. It didn't make a dramatic -- or even noticable -- difference in the quality of the audio coming out of my speakers; however, it did allow me to digitize my old cassette tapes and vinyl records, which is the main reason I bought it. If your computer can't accomodate a real sound card and its audio abilities aren't good enough for what you need, this might be the solution you're looking for.