CompuServe Thread

Its great. For what you get its a bargin. The only thing you'll need are speakers. Comes with six cd-roms including Windows, MS Works, and MS Bookshelf. Transfer rate is very acceptable. It plays audio cd-roms better than my stereo setup. The few multimedia cd-roms I've tried are excellent. I think you'll be pleased. P.S. Setup is a breeze. Took me less than an hour to be up and running.

Dave. I am a current owner of a SB Multimedia Upgrade kit and am more then happy with it. I have been participating in a beta involving a CD ROM and never encountered nearly the problems that some others did. The VidTest ratings of my setup matched most of the best results. If you want a set up that is MM compatible then you want the Creative Labs upgrade. I have heard of some problems concerning the SBPro but most of them have been with CD drives other then the one supplied with the kit. I have had no problems and now I hear that Creative has a beta going right now for Photo CD's. Kb

I, too, have the Creative Labs MM kit, although purchased as a special package at CompUSA. Aside from some initial installation problems (seems the CompUSA bundle was missing a diskette), I have been extremely happy. So far, it's run everything we've thrown at it (mostly games, but some reference works, too) very well. No problems with speed or compatability. Considering I only paid $400 for the kit, it was a true bargain. I guess my only complaint would be having to use CD caddies, but that's a very minor annoyance, and one that is shared by other drives as well. A friend of mine bought a NEC kit with an external drive, which also works well and included 10 CDs, but no sound card. Another concern you may hear is that the Sound Blaster card does not provide a true SCSI interface for the CD-ROM and, therefore, will only support the Panasonic drive included with the kit. However, unless you plan on adding many more devices, this shouldn't be much of a concern. Overall, I would recommend the kit. Good luck with your decision. -Bill

Many people swear by it, but you should also be aware of two caveats. First, you get the 8 bit SB Pro card, not the 16 bit SB 16 card that plays full-range 44Khz CD audio as opposed to just the 11 and 22Khz ranges of the Pro. This isn't much of a limiting factor now but is going to become one as this technology begins to really blossom this year. Second, the Sony drive is fine for most things that you can do right now, but is too slow to play the newer high-end full motion videos that require a 300Kbs speed (MMC spec is half that, and the Sony meets/exceeds that), so you might find that while it'll be great out of the box it'll be unable to keep up with newer software and CD ROMS coming out this year. The CDR also will play only single-session Kodak disks, while newer XA-compliant CD ROMS either can or can be upgraded to play multi-session disks. With that in mind (and you get what you pay for), it's a good deal, particularly as a starter kit.