Karthik Nataraaj

Creative Inspire T6060 5.1 speaker system

I’m glad to say that I have just bought a brand new Creative Inspire T6060 5.1 speaker system.

I upgraded my pc last year and here goes the configuration.

• Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
• Intel 915GAV Motherboard
• 1 GB DDR RAM (2 x 512) Transcend
• Seagate 80GB SATA Hard Drive
• Sony DVD writer and reader
• 17 inch LCD Monitor Samsung SyncMaster 713N
• Pinnacle PCTV Pro TV Tuner card
• Logitech QucikCam Pro 5000 webcam & headset
• Antec Cabinet (Door model)
• Logitech Normal Keyboard
• Microsoft Optical mouse
• APC 800VA UPS

The one thing I supposed to have is a good speaker system and a decent graphics card. I lost interest in gaming and I never liked hardcore gaming, so I left the graphic card. But for speakers I had been waiting for the right time to buy.

I bought a HITACHI 1 ton ATOM Split AC two months ago. When the AC was installed I remodeled the interior of my room completely. At that time, I asked the electrician to place small holes in all the corners of the room keeping the surround speakers in mind.

Some good music albums released last week during Tamil New year and I decided that this is the auspicious time to buy the speakers. Then a little confusion came whether to go for 5.1 or 7.1. My friends told that 5.1 suits best as my room is a 11 x 11 sq ft room. I did a small research about the speaker systems specifications and went through all the reviews and user comments about the speakers.

Finally Creative Inspire T6060 5.1 speakers impressed me and for sound card I looked the Audigy 2 Value. I phoned my local computer sales person and inquired about the availability and rates of the models. At first response, he told me that there is only a single 5.1 speaker system available in the market and its rate is Rs.3200. I told him that the specific speaker is available for sale at futurebazaar.com and sify shopping. I insisted him to get the rate of the specific models. After couple of days later; I got a phone call from him and he told that the T6060 speaker was available and the price is Rs.5100. He also told that the Audigy 2 Value soundcard is not available in the market and advised me that an external soundcard is not really required as my onboard card had 5.1 High Definition audio support.

I took his words and ordered for just the 5.1 speakers. Eagerly awaited two days and he came home with the brand new speakers pack and setup them in just 15 minutes. When he first played a song, my impression was not great but that I fine tuned a bit, it ROCKS. The bass is deep and chest thumbing at high volume.

I have not placed the speakers in the right places yet where its supposed to be. So the full effects of the speakers are not yet known. As of now I’m really satisfied with its performance and it’s a great value for money.

A small difficulty I’m having after setting up the speaker is I can’t use my headset now. All the linein, mic and audio out pins are plugged with the subwoofer are converted as rear, front and center speakers. There are only two options to get around this issue.

1. Using an USB headset.
2. Using two way pin for the mic and audio out.

Mine is not a USB headset, so 2nd is the only option for me. I will write more about the performance of the speakers after placing the speakers in the right spots next weekend and watching a good DVD movie to test the sound.

Add comment April 22nd, 2007

System Maintenance & ZoneAlarm 7.0 problems

I had been quite busy last couple weeks and couldn’t find time to blog. Lot of interesting things happened and I’ll blog about them here.

Last Sunday I was about to blog, but got struck with my system. My 80GB Hard drive is not large enough to fulfill my needs and almost 85% of the drive was filled with my softwares, music, e-learning and reference materials. The performance of the system was badly hit by this and I decided to clean up my system before its too late.

First I prepared a list of all the important files, which are need to be written it a DVD before doing anything. I burnt all the files which were taking space in the hard disk to give my system some breathing space first. One by one I finished the list but still I didn’t feel any noticeable performance boost in the system. So I downloaded and installed the windows registry cleaning software Registry Mechanic to clean the registry. It scanned my complete registry and showed around 300 errors. I just clicked the repair button which fixed all the errors in a second’s time.

Since I hadn’t done defragmentation for more than 6 months, I started the process and it took about 5 hours to finish. After doing it, I got a notification from ZoneAlarm that a new version had released and prompted me to upgrade.

One thing I’ve never cared about is the antivirus problem, because of the great software package ZoneAlarm Security Suite which takes care of the security department of my system. I have been using ZoneAlarm for more than 4 years and it never failed to protect my system and gave me no problems at all.

As its a most trusted software of mine, I had no second thought about upgrading to the new 7.0 version. Happily, I upgraded the software and noticed that the logo of the software has changed and some layout changes. Everything looked perfect till I rebooted the system.

How to say..? I received a strange error message whenever a file is opened and also the system restarted randomly. I was terribly shocked and felt that something had gone wrong in the maintenance session. Since ZoneAlarm is in my favorite zone, my first suspicion was in the Registry cleaning software which was installed just before I upgraded ZoneAlarm. So I restored all the changes made in the registry using the same software but still the error messages didn’t disappear.

The error appeared whenever a file was accessed and that gave a small hint about the antivirus, because only the antivirus softwares have the nature of checking a file whenever its accessed. Then I started to suspect the new version of zonealarm I upgraded and googled about the problem. I guessed it right, lot of people who installed the new version had the same problem and hot discussions were going in the message boards and some blog comments.

Suddenly uninstalled the ZoneAlarm Security suite 7.0 version and installed my old-gold 6.5 version. Everything worked again and things went back normally. I’m not even going to think of upgrading zonealarm until a solid bugfree version releases. Although it’s a simple problem, it gave me mental worry before finding out the issue.

Thus goes my system maintenance session and now I can see some good difference in my system performance.

I’ve bought a new 5.1 speaker system and will write more about it in my next post.

Add comment April 19th, 2007