Much as I love my Creative music players, let’s face the truth.

They’re fucking dead.

Congratulations Apple.  Tap that ass and run it out of town.  You win.  You fucking overpriced iPods and original screwless designs rule.  Yep, no way around.  You fucking own.

Actually, I gave my little niece a small Creative player a couple models old and here’s what she had to say:

“Dear Uncle,

Thanks for your gift but it sucks.

Pros: You can convert your mp3 to wma, which allows you to put a lot more songs.

Cons: USB sucks eggs, always lock up.

When I first got this player, there was no problems, but occasionally it would lock up when I was uploading music to the player. Every time it locks up, I had to format it and delete all the songs, causing me to start all over. Now, it does not even work at all! I am stuck with those songs on the player. I cannot add or delete songs anymore.

The only thing I liked about this player is the software it comes with, it converts my mp3 format to wma, and allow me to put over 150 songs. But overall, it sucks because of the USB. Never use Creative again.  They’re like emo.  So gay!”

A lot of newer motherboards now feature excellent-sounding on board sound chips.  I canvassed shops over the weekend and even saw a couple with built-in Creative X-Fi chips.  I’ve demoed some of these setups and they really sound great, better than my two year old Sound Blaster setup.  Does this spell the end for the Sound Blaster as we’ve  known it?

Personally, I do a lot of CPU-intensive work on my PC and as far as I can tell, on-board chips eat up processing power on your machine.  This means extra load that takes away from your regular processing tasks - like generating thousands of spam webpages in the background while you’re studying an excel spreadsheet, designing a logo on Photoshop and running a raunchy movie  all at the same time.

You’re basically dispensing horsepower to deliver top-notch quality sound.  Standalone cards, even when they’re two years old like mine, has its own dedicated digital sound processor to render its beautiful output.  Until I get a PC that can run 100 things at the same time and not lag, I think standalone cards are still the way to go.

I got an affiliate check last week and bought myself a Creative Prodikey!Have you seen this thing? It’s nuts!

First, it’s a full-featured QWERTY keyboard like a regular typing keyboard. It types nice and has soft keys but how many times can you be excited with a keyboard?

What makes this baby cool is under the QWERTY pad, it’s got 37 touch-sensitive music keys and accessible music controls so you can play, record and make music on your PC. It comes bundled with a good Sounf Blaster card which I sold because I just bought a new one last February.

Anyway, here’s the specs from the Prodikeys website:

Technical Specifications: Hardware

• Standard 104 keys
• IBM compatible computer keyboard
• Integrated 37 MIDI keys
• Pitch Bend and Volume Control wheels
• Fun button for starting Creative Prodikeys software
• Connects directly to computer’s PS2 keyboard port

Technical Specifications: Software

• Four different modes for learning and playing music: Impress, Easy Play, Learn, Perform
• Step-by-step “How to Play” instructional guide
• Penta tunes 5-tone keys with matching rhythms, instrumental fill-ins and effects
• Fun Tunes Professional DeeJay mixes at the touch of a music key
• Five guided lessons for learning to play a song
• Point scoring system to monitor learning progress
• Intellient Chord Accompaniment for single-handed playing
• 100 music styles under 10 style categories: Ballad, Slow Ballad, Pop, Dance, Rock & Roll, Old Latin, Modern Latin, Jazz, Waltz & Folk
• Record and save in WAV, MIDI or MP3 format

So far, I suck at playing but I don’t care. This thing is way too fun. I just created some really crazy sounding ringtones, saved straight from my keyboard. Damn that’s nice!

I’ve recently quit smoking so maybe this will make a nice new habit for me. Awwwww……