Creative Labs Launches New Microsoft 'Family' Multimedia Upgrade Kit

- Families are Doing It for Themselves: As New PC Market Reaches Saturation, Creative Targets 2nd Timers and Cost Conscious Newcomers -

Ruscombe, May 16th, 1996 - Creative Labs, the leading provider of multimedia products for the PC, today announced a new partnership with Microsoft to provide a complete multimedia upgrade kit for all the family. Available from May 20th, the Sound Blaster Multimedia Family 32 8X has an SRP of Ł299.00 excluding VAT.

Combining state-of-the-art hardware from Creative Labs with a range of top Microsoft titles, Sound Blaster Multimedia Family will transform a standard PC into a multi-purpose computer for the whole family. Including leading home productivity, entertainment and education titles, the package offers value to every member of the family.

"As consumers' confidence in technology increases, many families are realising they don't have to spend Ł1500 on a new PC to get the system they need," said Dave Askew, Creative Labs' UK sales manager. "A two year old PC can take on a new lease of life with one of our Family kits - it's a low cost route to state-of- the-art home computing."

The kit includes:
Hardware

Sound Blaster 32 Plug and Play sound card

Creative's 8 speed CD-ROM drive

High performance powered stereo speakers

Full Sound Blaster and Windows 95 compatibility

Software

CD Sampler

Microsoft Works 3.0 for Windows 3.1

Fine Artist 1.0

Autoroute Express: Europe 1.0

Microsoft Golf 2.0

Wine Guide 1.0

Creative Writer 1.0

Explorapaedia - The World of People 1.0

Technical Details
Sound Blaster 32 Plug and Play is a wave table audio card suitable for a wide variety of multimedia applications. The card utilizes EMU8000-based wave table technology which generates real instrument, rather than synthesised sounds. The card also features Creative's 3D Stereo Enhancement technology.

Creative 8X IDE CD-ROM drive is designed with a patent-pending feature that enables it to detect the optimum speed the CD-ROM requires for the smoothest possible playback. It also includes CD-EXTRA support that reads CDs with digital audio and data. The Blaster CD 8X delivers a typical access rate of 230ms, a 1200KB transfer rate and features 256KB memory buffer. Its IDE interface is best suited to handle the high-speed transfer rates of 8X drives, allowing users to obtain optimum performance from all software titles.

About Creative ...
Creative Technology, Ltd., is the world's leading provider of advanced multimedia solutions for personal computers, including sound, graphics, communications and video conferencing products. The company's Sound Blaster technology has been accepted as the worldwide standard sound platform for PCs, and the company's global distribution network is the most extensive in the multimedia industry. Creative is focused on enhancing the overall user experience by providing powerful, enabling, high value technology for the mass market.

Creative Technology was founded in 1981 and is based in Singapore. The company's subsidiaries include Creative Labs in China, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and the US. The European head office is based at Ruscombe, near Twyford in the UK. In January 1994, Creative opened its technical support group in Dublin, which provides telephone support to French, German, English, Italian, Scandinavian and Spanish speaking customers across Europe. Creative's stock is traded on the NASDAQ exchange, with sales in FY 1995 of $1202.3 million - a 83% increase on 1994.