Stories about: Creative Labs

The first-generation Zune media player that Microsoft released last year was a me-too product with a few nice touches. So the question with the new, second-generation Zune is whether Microsoft is ready to surpass its competition, most notably Apple and its iPods.

Need proof that Apple's iPod and iTunes Store has forever changed how people, particularly mobile people, acquire music? Here it is: The recording industry recently reported that nearly 13 percent fewer CDs were sold in 2006 than the previous year, while sales of downloaded digital songs increased by almost 60 percent.

Five months after its introduction in the US, industry experts give Microsoft's Zune media player barely passing grades in terms of its marketplace success while Microsoft insists the device is on course.

Expanding its line of developer tools, Microsoft on Monday announced a version of Visual Studio for the production of computer games.

Microsoft executives urged hardware makers on Tuesday to build drivers for the upcoming 64-bit releases of Windows, lest the adoption of 64-bit computing be held back by hardware incompatibilities.

Compaq Computer launched a 1.33GHz multimedia desktop computer for consumers on Thursday, featuring an optional recordable digital versatile disc (DVD) drive and digital video editing software.

IBM will announce this week its first three desktop PCs featuring Intel's new Pentium 4 processor -- a high-end consumer-oriented PC and two desktop machines aimed at businesses.

Advice:It's great to see (and hear) a growing selection of Mac-compatible MP3 portables. The Rio 600 is the best of the three tested here, sporting an attractive design, the most legible LCD, and an innovative expansion scheme. It's also the least-expensive device and has the fastest transfer times. The Nomad II is a solid runner-up; its built-in FM tuner and voice recorder make it particularly versatile. The lowly I-Jam, burdened by a cryptic LCD, separate Jam Station hardware, and a weak FM tuner, finishes in last place.

When it comes to subverting popular computing technologies to serve its own stockholders, nobody beats Microsoft Corp. The company did it with graphical user interfaces, it did it with dozens of disk and file utilities, and it did it again with the Web. Now Microsoft wants you to leave the widely accepted MP3 file format behind and come over to the dark side: Windows Media Audio. It would be easy to dismiss WMA as a crappy substitute for the real digital- audio McCoy, but--surprise!--WMA may actually turn out to be better than MP3 for many of us.

Rated on specs alone, ATI's latest board--the much-anticipated Radeon--would be a top contender. It packs an impressive technological résumé, with fill-rate specifications of over 1 gigatexel per second, a sophisticated new hardware transform-and-lighting engine, ATI's innovative Hyper-Z compression for faster frame rates at the highest resolutions, and the ability to process three texture units per pass (more than any other board). The version we tested comes with 64MB of fast Double Data Rate memory (the 32MB version uses a slightly slower version of DDR and has a slightly slower clock speed).

Most of the action on this month's power chart occurs in the lower echelons. The Kingdom Royale PIII-933 claims seventh spot. Fueled by Intel Corp.'s newest processor, the Royale performs a tad slower than PIII-1000-enabled systems but at a much lower cost. It's a good choice if you need power but don't want to pay top dollar. CyberMax Inc.'s Enthusiast K7-950 slips onto the chart in tenth place, thanks to a robust feature set. Dell Computer Corp. discontinued its Dimension XPS B800r, allowing last month's number five PC, the Micron Electronics Inc. Millennia Max 800, to ride a US$150 price drop into the top spot.