November 12, 2004 - Notebook computers have been closing the power gap between themselves and desktop PCs for some time now. A while back you'd be lucky to have a notebook half as fast as a high-end PC, but nowadays you're able to pick up a notebook with roughly equal the processing power of the fastest desktop systems available.

As fast as notebooks have gotten in terms of processing speed, it seems that mobile graphics chips have been increasing in speed at an even faster rate. A few years back you'd be hard pressed to find a laptop that could run a new game at similar speeds to a desktop PC. Now with things like the RADEON Mobile 9800 having been on the market for a bit and better chips like NVIDIA's GeForce Go 6800 just now arriving, mobile gamers are able to run games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at desktop-comparable speeds and resolutions.

But with all of the raw speed increases, sound has been left in the dust. Sure, there are a few reasonable breakout box options, but those are bulky to carry around and make your notebook less mobile than it should be. In general, the sound options available to notebook gamers have been mediocre at best.

Until now. Enter Creative's Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook, its first compact and nearly zero-footprint surround sound audio solution for notebooks. The card is essentially a very small version of its SB Audigy 2 ZS desktop soundcard, featuring all of the same features and software solutions in a tight, neat little package.

That tight, neat little package is specifically a PCMCIA card with a small extension for the audio connectors. Once popped into your laptop, the extension only sticks out about 1" and measures about 2" wide by about 3/8" tall. It's pretty damn small, especially for the sound that it puts out. It's small enough that you could potentially leave it plugged into your laptop while it's packed up for travel, though even if you pull it out, it's so small it takes up practically zero room in your bag.

Hooking it Up
As far as the connectors go, there obviously isn't a lot of room on the ZS Notebook for much, but the design is quite smart and allows plenty of options. There are two 1/8" connectors on each end of the card, one in and one out. The output will push a set of headphones as well as provide an optical out solution. The input has optical in, mic in and line in. Using an appropriate adapter, you should be able to hook up pretty much anything you want to it.

But what about surround sound speakers? That's the cool part. The third connector on the card lies between the two 1/8" connectors and provides a single-out solution for an included docking adapter. Said adapter converts from the single connector to three stereo outputs, the same that you'd find on the back of an Audigy or any other surround sound card.

Simply hook up your speaker system to the three audio outputs on the docking cable, plug it into the ZS Notebook and you're ready to go. When you come back from wherever you go, all you need to do is plug in one cable and you've got your system running again.

A neat effect of this already smart design is that you can purchase additional docking cables for hooking up multiple sound systems. If you have, say, one speaker system in your den, one in your bedroom and one at work, all you have to do is plug in a single cable wherever you're at to get your surround sound on.

Setting up the card itself is a piece of cake. Just plug it in, install the software and you're ready to go. As far as included software goes, it mirrors that of a regular Audigy 2 ZS, so if you've been using one of those at home, you know what's in store for you.