This is why I dont buy Creative

[Agent]

Message to Daniel_K - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

Creative cripple the older cards under Vista compared to XP. Bloke adds back the functionality. Creative accuses him of theft.
This just about sums it up.

Well worth a read.

[AndrewJ]

That is just plain wrong, this guy brought the X-Fi back to the people on Vista.

Their forums are littered with unhappy people some whom have paid for £300+ cards and they are totally ignored.

I personally boycott all Creative stuff now, and I urge my friends to do the same.

[staffsMike]

Wow.. I knew creative support was bad.. but that is a whole new low for them.

I remember the old nomad explorer they offered free so you could use your Zen quickly and easily, which they removed for no reason other than they wanted you to use mediasource which is ****!! They also cease support for older zen products far earlier than they rightfully should.

I recieved another zen as a gift after that but it will probably be the last one.

[pollaxe]

That's awful (yet a part of me is not surprised at all.) Bah.

[SiM]

Originally Posted by pollaxe

Bah.

Is there a goat nearby?

This does indeed sound terrible. Maybe we should make a list, of vista compatible alternatives and then sticky it.

[Nelly.]

Only just noticed this thread as I posted in the news thread.

Terrible of Creative to do this, if they cannot fully support their sound cards in vista then they deserve all they get especially forcing 1 person who does a better job than the whole of the Creative company with the drivers.

I'll sell off my XFI & look at an alternative product - probally Asus Xonar.

[Agent]

I didn't actually realise how bad it was. Having just read through a lot of pages there I'm shocked and will never buy another Creative product while they have their current business practices.

According to some forum posts, they have removed features from cards via a driver update under the same OS previously, in an effort to get people to upgrade to their product.
Shocking if true. Its bad enough going to a different OS....but the same one?

[Jay]

he is asking for donations. If he didn't I guess they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I love my X-fi but the fact they have made poor drivers for Vista shows they want to force people to upgrade. To me, for home gaming etc X-Fi is the best so I will never need to upgrade it, unless they destroy the drivers that is... oh, hold on.

ps, I still use the first drivers for the card.

[Agent]

The X-fi Vista drivers and horribly, horribly broken

With the donations - he wasn't forcing people to donate, just saying "If you want to , here's my Paypal" kinda thing. Anyone could download them for free and not charge.

To be fair, he fixed so much I would gladly give him a few quid considering how bad the official drivers are and the amount of hair pulling they cause.

[SiM]

He should keep releasing them (under a differ alias) on the bay of pirates

[-iceblade^]

wow... and here i was thinking Creative are the best sound providers on the market...

won't buy Creative anything, ever, that's for sure...

[Jay]

Creative don't want the drivers fixed, that is the biggest problem.

why are we all still up?

[Agent]

Originally Posted by -iceblade^

wow... and here i was thinking Creative are the best sound providers on the market...

won't buy Creative anything, ever, that's for sure...

In my experience, Creative are 80% marketing, 20% product on their soundcards. They seem to convince everyone there is a "breakthrough" in audio tech every few years and the public lap it up.

Originally Posted by Jay

why are we all still up?

EvE

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by Agent

.....

Creative cripple the older cards under Vista compared to XP. Bloke adds back the functionality. Creative accuses him of theft..

That's not the way I read what they said.

If cards had the functionality under XP and you don't get it under Vista, but he released drivers that enable it, Creative said they have no problem ... provided users understand it may have problems being supported.

Where Creative have said they have a problem is when unofficial drivers use their IP to enable features that weren't enabled on the original card, even under XP.

It's not uncommon for manufacturers to release more than one version of a card at more than one price, with the feature set varying accordingly. That allows those that want advanced features and are able and willing to pay for them to have then, but users wanting a more budget version to buy a feature-reduced version. And, clearly, it's far more economical to have one basic card than to engineer multiple versions. If they did, it would drive the price up. So getting the hump at someone who uses their IP to enable features that weren't enabled on the cards the user actually bought seems fair enough. The user of those lower-end cards didn't pay for those features.


Their unwillingness or inability to produce drivers that fully support existing (and recent) products under Vista is pretty pathetic, though.

[Jay]

what features did he manage to enable?

[SiM]

Look at first google result for daniel_k... Lol
you gotta love the power of google's search algorithms