Originally Posted by arthurhlevine

>>> "I upgraded my PC as the laptop was unreliable, and chose Vista Premium. It is very good, with new features and helpful things." <<<
Very good stuff huh? That would explain why: "I specified that I wanted to be able to download analogue video from my camera. So they put in a video card."
I have no idea why a new modern PC with 2Gb RAM would need a video card for such a simple process unless it was running MSVista. A decent motherboard even with shared memory for video is more than sufficient for anything non graphics intensive, which "to be able to download analogue video from my camera" is certainly not. All the modern chipsets and boards are more than sufficient for such demands.
"So I had to take the PC back to get a Vista certified sound card installed (the one they had put in wasn't certified-they just assumed it was OK as no-one else had complained). And then the audio pickup was fine."
I wouldn't consider a sound card as a requirement for any modern system period, unless you are a serious audiophile. It just plain isn't necessary, onboard sound is very good now-a-days, and has been for a while now.....

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