New computer just purchased, no more 24/96 audio from my creative card. What to do?

I just purchased a new laptop for school, its gorgeous and has an i5 with 6gb ram, and 64 bit windows7. My problem is that I will no longer be able to use my creative audigy zs notebook with optical out for my music. I was hoping that I would be able to continue using my compass, and headphones with it and would possibly get rid of my older computer, but now I am stuck holding onto it until a good (affordable and fidelity) solution presents itself. Any ideas? I liked the usability of the creative soundcard stuff, but my new computer does not have a expresscard slot either, otherwise I would have purchased the creative x-fi notebook.

I run the audio out of the audigy zs notebook with the optical connection in ASIO/bitperfect mode. I can hear an improvement with the 24/96 audio, and so I dont really want to downgrade my audio to 16bit usb audio. Im not really in a great financial state right now, and if necessary, I will wait until I graduate next year and get a job to find a viable solution. (it would allow my new, small computer to remain portable and untethered, i could use the usb plug if necessary)

Does anybody have any ~$150 (or less) solutions that will let me continue using my compass' optical input with 24/96 audio with this newer computer?

Thanks,

  Andre

I just thought of this, but is HDMI a viable option? I dont know of any DACs that accept HDMI inputs.

Wow, Ive just been looking into some things and the more expensive solutions look pretty awesome. Especially the Halide Design Bridge and the Audiophilleo1. Are there other ones that im missing? The Zodiac is a similar product right? Or is that only a DAC?

I just received the computer today, and although it is gorgeous, I am thankful that I hate all laptop speakers and use a dac. Seriously, this thing has the worst speakers I have ever heard in my LIFE. They are that bad. They sound like a tweeter at the bottom of a deep hole. Absolutely horrible.

Anyways one question, how much of an improvement will I get with WASAPI enabled in foobar? Is it worth it? And will the sound be better than I am getting right now out of a computer with an audigy 2 zs notebook soundcard outputting 24/96 ASIO sound? Should I continue using my other computer as my source until I make a decision on what I am going to do to get sound out of the usb of this computer? Thanks for any input.