This is why I dont buy Creative

[shaithis]

A good analogy would be someone releasing an update for vista home basic that turned on all the ultimate features.

I am sure Microsoft would not be happy and rightly so. Regardless of how much you think their prices are a rip-off, they have the right to tell you to stop or even prosecute.


As for creative, show me one other soundcard that is on par with the XFi? There seems to be sod-all choice and they have the market wrapped-up, just like Microsoft.

[kalniel]

He was accepting donations (which probably would not have covered the time it took if it was a paid job). However, it was not a pay to download service he was offering, just if you wanted to drop him a few quid, you could.

I'm unsure how legally acceptable it is to hide behind donations for services rather than demand payment. If there is even a hint of the donation being related to the service he's providing then he is getting renumeration I'd expect.

Keep in mind that some peoples cards are/were unusable without his modded drivers.

Then they are entitled to a refund from their retailer.

Are they though for previously sold cards, advertising that technology?
If you buy a card advertising X technology and Creative decide to take it away in an update, is this restriction fair / legal? After all, you have paid for these features to work as advertised.
I suppose you could argue that you have not paid to use them under a different OS, however is a cards feature OS dependant? Would really be pushing the boat out if they want to claim that one

Then again the best course of action is to take that to court or at least trading standards. If a product doesn't work as advertised then you are fully protected. What you should NOT do is take it into your own hands - the law exists for a reason.

[Agent]

Absolutely agree with what you've said there, and in all honesty I'd love to see Creative be investigated by Trading Standards, but due to direct experience with them I just don't have faith in them when it comes to technical issues like this.
Its not they are not good at their job, but there seems to be a lack of people who work there and would understand a technical situation like this.

Court? Would be nice, although I doubt many people who've brought a soundcard to listen to music would do that due to the costs involved

I don't think the law should be broken in this way, but I don't think customers should have to in order to get what they brought working properly.

[Steve B]

A good analogy would be someone releasing an update for vista home basic that turned on all the ultimate features.

That would be enabling features which previously weren't available.
This guy is adding in features that previously were available on the same hardware.
The analogy doesn't hold.

[Agent]

Spot on Steve.

Creative still won't / haven't said which "other" features he was enabling that were not available under XP, I'd really like to know what they think they are.

Its the entire "It won't work on Vista" attitude they had.....until someone proved them wrong. They lied. They purposefully locked them down. They got found out. That annoys me.

[s_kinton]

Its the entire "It won't work on Vista" attitude they had.....until someone proved them wrong. They lied. They purposefully locked them down. They got found out. That annoys me.

Thats what gets on my goat too!

This has made good publicity, I might go and find daniel_k's vista 64bit driver on torrent. Didn't really know much about these before yesterday

[dangel]

I think my next sound card won't be Creative - with Vista, OpenAL and games shifting away from EAX there's likely to be more choice. Creative's drivers are shockingly bad (even now) and I guess we should be glad MS have shunted them out of the kernel.

I ended up using modded Auzentech drivers on Vista64 - because with 4gb of RAM I just got five channels of constant white noise. Quality.

[s_kinton]

I ended up using modded Auzentech drivers on Vista64 - because with 4gb of RAM I just got five channels of constant white noise. Quality.

Oooooh, I want that!

[latrosicarius]

i don't buy them because their sound cards don't have internal USB pins / external USB ports to plug USB-based mic into.

What's the point of having a sound card if your USB mic plugs directly into the motherboard and has its own drivers and is processed 100% by the CPU?

Same with USB-based speakers. That pissed me off. Now this Daniel_k message pisses me off even more. This company has failed for the last time.

Oh, and P.S. their mp3 players are crap and their Zen mp3 software sucks ass.

[No.72]

For some reason I can never get 5.1 to work properly in vista 64bit..... In games it doesn't work, DD live dosent work properly, the reciver saies DD live or DTS depending on what I choice. Ime using these Auzentech, Inc. Sound Cards. Audio You Can Believe In. World First soundcards for Music, HTPC, and Gaming. ... the xplosion card.

[usxhe190]

At the end of the day:

Creative had the legal right to protect their IP BUT at the same time, they pissed off ALOT of people who only used their products because of this illegal driver.

To me, the lost in reputation must surely be greater than their intellectual property...because if they really thought about it, the value of IP is directly linked to their reputation!!

[Agent]

i don't buy them because their sound cards don't have internal USB pins / external USB ports to plug USB-based mic into.

What's the point of having a sound card if your USB mic plugs directly into the motherboard and has its own drivers and is processed 100% by the CPU?

All USB mics will do that, its not a soundcard thing.
The Mic is a sound device in its own right in this situation. It simply 'emulates' a basic soundcard and sets the input to itself

[Zak33]

to me it seems simple:

Someone did a better job than them, and he didn't fill it with their normal spyware dross, so they got the 'ump and slapped him.

Poor sod. Try to help the world and get a slapping.

Here's a company who realised a better sound system existed and it was on only two speakers....but created a really very good 3d sound stage. They got the arse cos it kicked EAX to death in real gaming, and so they sued Aureal for "patent infringement" or some such rubbish, and although Aureal won, they went bankrupt cos they couldn't sell anything while Creative were kicking them so hard with big lawyers.

So Creative brought the bankrupt company..and did nowth with it.

Why? Cos they know best, as this bloke now knows too.

A3D - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[latrosicarius]

All USB mics will do that, its not a soundcard thing.
The Mic is a sound device in its own right in this situation. It simply 'emulates' a basic soundcard and sets the input to itself

Right... which is what I'm saying... theres no point in having a sound card if you have a USB mic...
is this what you are saying too?

[Thorsson]

No. If you have a soundcard (or even onboard sound) you shouldn't buy a USB mic, which is more suitable for laptops, as your sound quality will be worse and you'll pay more for it.

[latrosicarius]

No. If you have a soundcard (or even onboard sound) you shouldn't buy a USB mic, which is more suitable for laptops, as your sound quality will be worse and you'll pay more for it.

no........... your quality is not worse with a USB mic

The question is... with the advent of USB microphones and speakers which keep the signal digital for longer... what use is a sound card?

Now, if the sound card had USB pins/plugs and was able to accept the USB microphone and process it FOR the cpu, THEN, a sound card would be good to have still