Electronics : LINDY USB 2.0 to Audio Adapter

Rating: - Not sure about this one
A neat unit, but despite trying a different driver and tweaking all the volume controls I could find, I failed to get this unit working satisfactorily. Maybe I was just unlucky, but with Windows XP I could not get my microphone working, and the sound volume remained low. The sound and mike work OK in a different set-up, so this leaves me with a question mark over the USB adapter.

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Rating: - A good quality piece of kit
After reading up on improving the accuracy when using Dragon naturally speaking, I found out that USB audio often gives much better results than soundcards onboard motherboards (unless the soundcard happens to be a high-end one). I can happily report that by changing from my motherboard's onboard Realtek soundcard to using this USB one the quality score from Dragon naturally speaking (effectively the signal to noise ratio) has improved from not more than 15, to a reliable 20. Without really doing controled testing, it does seem that Dragon is a fair bit more accurate using the USB card. Frankly given what a significant difference it makes, I'm surprised that Dragon supply their standard and preferred additions with analogue microphones. Recommended for anybody using speech recognition software.