5.1 or 7.1 Sound solution for T41/T42 ?

[arion]

What is a good way to get 5.1 or 7.1 sound from a T41 / T42 ?

Maybe there should be a FAQ / sticky thread with howto do these things as I expect many people keep asking for better sound, TV tuners etc

Thanks.

[lzy_tek]

Saw a review here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050222/index.html

You can search the best price online. It's around $105.

[Leeper]

I have read/heard a bunch of goods things about the Creative PCMCIA card.

[arion]

Yeah I have been looking at the Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook but I have owned many creative sound cards and still use the SBLive Value and they do not update their drivers and they are of poor quality. It just peeves me that Creative SBLive, Audigy 1 and 2 have the same drivers but creative modifies them so they only work on the lastest hardware so there are no updates for their cards.

Canon also do this as well just that they are much worse than Creative.

[fbrdphreak]

The Creative is a cool card. I'm reviewing one with my Thinkpad right now and it sounds a LOT better than the integrated sound. I unfortunately can't test it with a surround system as my colleague has done that, but headphones sound worlds better. The only minor issue that I have experienced so far (and might only have been a one-time thing), but when you disable the card to remove it and pop it out, the onboard sound doesn't take over; I think you have to reboot. I will be testing that in further depth this week, feel free to e-mail me if you have more questions (I'm not on here often, so don't bother with a PM).

Overall, if you want great sound quality on your laptop, this is probably the best way to do it. I will also be testing CPU utilization to see if it affects games compared to the onboard sound.
Hope this helps!