Upgrading your computer speakers. I'm Fred Fishkin with Bootcamp, a report on computers and technology. The quality of speakers that are sold with computer systems varies widely. If you didn't pay much attention to what you were getting when you bought your PC, you would be amazed at the difference good speakers can make when listening to music, playing games or if you have a DVD drive, watching movies. One of the upgrade options on the market now are digital speakers that don't even need a sound card. Philips has been among the companies leading the way using USB technology in its own brand and also in speakers carrying the Microsoft brand name. Microsoft's Don Coyner...

"The DSS 80 speakers from the Microsoft hardware group really take advantage of USB and that's enabled with Windows 98. And by using that with our speakers you actually bypass the sound card in your PC. And so the sound processing for the audio actually takes place in the sub-woofer of the speaker as opposed to inside the computer which is a really noisy electronic environment."

The speakers sell for about two hundred dollars, but the sound quality rivals high end traditional speakers costing many times more. You can spend as little as fifty dollars to improve the sound in your PC. The Powered Partners line from Advent is sometimes an option from PC makers...

"You do see a better quality of product coming from PC manufacturers today than you did a few years ago."

Advent designer Cary Christie.