XPS M1710 Advanced Audio...its worth it

Cool, Nick. I may try it myself.

Is there anywhere we can purchase this upgrade third party? we do not have the option in the UK

ok thanks

Are the activation numbers reusable?
If it is, i am surprise that it's not shared by now.

BTW, what's the difference between "Creative Labs Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio" driver and "Creative Labs Integrated Audigy invitation"?

Im sure they are I done clean instal and when it brings you to the creative labs page they ask why you are reinstaling the software? Hardrive failure reinstal of os ect. I just choosed reinstal of OS. now how many times you can do this????? I'm sure time will tel HEHE

If I were them, I would place a hardcoded serial number at the hardware, and 1 activation number is registered to one Serial Number. That way, the activation number is useless on another SigmaTel chip.
This is pretty smart for Creative Labs, they might offered Dell $2 per SigmaTel chip, and Dell jumps on it for all notebooks and desktop, and end users have to pay $20 for a "decent" sound which they should include in the original driver.
So, basically, it's $20 to get a proper driver. $0 to use a handicap driver.
They use SigmaTel as the name for the chip, so people can't complain about $20 for a driver, because the original driver is from SigmaTel (which can be programmed by Creative Labs anyways). Talk about money making strategy.

anyways, what if the chip is fried or motherboard replaced?

Dell would be obligated to give you another activation code.

So if I understand correctly, the right hardware shipped but it's crippled until you pay the 30 bucks? Like if they gave you a 7900 GTX but had it running at 6600GT speeds until you ponied up the ransom?

Also, is this an onboard audio card using the CPU, or does it have it's own chipset to take the load off the CPU? I guess I should have researched the sound a bit before I ordered it

Teh hardware is the same on all motherboards for the M1710. The Creative HD audio is just a software upgrade that uses the sigmatel audio card. They don't cripple anything, you can just use more advanced features of the card if you buy the audio upgrade.

This is funny. They dont cripple anything. Just dont give you everything the hardware can provide. Basically, as I said before, they dont give you the "optimal" driver until you dont pay $30. There is nothing wrong with it, it's actually smart, as I stated. They carefully market it so that they dont get flamed by mass public. ("Software Upgrade" gives you this and that. ) They are basically the same company , or associate that plan this out to make some money and control the market share. You see all these Dell notebook with sigmatel chip? Again that's nothing wrong with having a smart plan to make money. It's like our 7900 GTX 512. Nvidia can ask us to pay $50 2 months down the road and they will give us 7950 GTX 512 with a "Software Upgrade", which is just a driver update, and it wil perform 20% faster than 7900 GTX. Would you pay for it? $50 for 20% faster? For sure, that's a good deal. But when you think about it more, you will feel you get ripped off, but still good deal at the same time. When you buy 1710, you pay for 7900 GTX performance. You didn't expect 7950 performance, so there is nothing wrong. If nvidia give you more performance, then you have to pay for it. Seems fair, right? But if you pay for 7900 GTX chipset's maximum performance, and expect nvidia to do a good job on updating it to keep it optimal (that's what ATI and Nvidia doing every month). Then you dont expect nvidia to charge you for that, right? It's like you bought a Honda prelude from Honder dealer , and after you bought it, the salesman tells you if you pay Honda $1000, Honda can tell you how to activate the Vtec2 and give you 50 more HP.

^ im confusslzed

I followed, but more to the point next time please?

So.. is the audio bottlenecked by the CPU, reducing performance - or is the sound chip taking some of the "work"?

Ie. Will disabling sound increase FPS..

Now that's something I never heard before, and never thought about before.

it ads some effects, this pack is an add-on that creative released i think it will be an option on many lappies from now on, (and with no usb x-fi on the horizon...) i just installed it on my e1705 and it rocks. i was $19.99 BTW

All the eax calculations and effects are done by the CPU, not sure about cmss and any other audio effects.

If you only plan to use the laptop speakers and headphones (and not output to any additional speakers) then consider this upgrade, how ever if you have 5.1 or anything like that dont bother, put it towards a usb sound card or hold out for an express card solution.