Recently I moved in to a new house and one my speakers blew a capacitor. After replacing the capacitor the speaker worked great for about 5 minutes but then smoke began billowing out of the back. It still sounded okay but it I suspected based on the smoke… the speaker was just not repairable at least not by the likes of me. No matter I already ordered a Bose Companion 5 desktop sound system from the Bose web site. It’s a USB system so there are some downsides if you work your computer hard like mine. When I am building an Installer in Install Shield sometimes music will crackle a little. If I am compiling a large project in Visual Studio the same can happen. Also if you have downloaded low quality music online sometimes it sounds worse on these speakers. Music from Napster sounds amazing. Bose uses research from MIT to build these speakers and for the money these are the best sounding speakers for music and games. There are actually two speakers in each speaker unit which lends it’s self to surround sound effects. It’s a lot of money for speakers but I using PAs before and they cost just as much and don’t sound anywhere near as good. The control pad allows you to tap it for mute and you spin the wheel to adjust the volume. Right now I am listening to L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole. I love the way it sounds. Running Windows 7 everything works great.