Companion software - useful?

[Jeremy]

Out of curiousity, do you find the companion software bundled on the driver CD of a hardware device useful? Take, for example, Creative Mediasource and all the other Creative-branded applications bundled with the Sound Blaster Audigy II ZS. I find Mediasource to be less functional than Windows Media Player (gasp!) so I don't really use it. I doubt I will be using any of the environmental effects that the card is capable of either.

If Windows came with an integrated DVD decoder, I doubt I would use any of the companion software bundled with a video card either.

[sodface]

I used to always check out the included software. I used to install everything and play around with it. I don't anymore. I'm to the point now that all I want is drivers and that's it. Maybe I'm missing out but I don't remember ever actually keeping any of the included stuff installed for very long. The only exceptions have been temp monitoring apps.

As far as the DVD decoder - I've used a free dvd codec that lets you watch dvds with windows media player. It was located at www.maximusdvd.com but that site is not responding at this time. I don't know how many free codecs are out there right now I haven't looked in a while, but anyone is interested in this one I've got it and can post it up. It's just the codec, apparently maximus also had a standalone software player too but I never tried it.