I was having problems with 2 consecutive SBLive cards, I didn't really like the LiveWare crap either, so I bought a Santa Cruz card. I've liked it a lot more than the SBLive cards I had. Only updated the drivers right when I got it (since I was running win2k) and havn't done anything with it since. It has a clean interface instead of that ugly liveware bar. It Puts a little blue speaker in your systray that replaces the default little yellow one, which adds some functionality and thats it. It also has some feature to do with headphones, I tried it and it was cool but not really a selling point. At first I thought it sounded better, but now I'm not sure if that was even true or not. Great card if your in the market for something new, IMO.
Cya,
skace