Damage Control......

A story for you:

Why do you keep supporting companies like this? Or at least I hope this f@#& up finally opened your eyes and you won't support them anymore.

Letting them off the hook could have been understandable years and years ago, when the games weren't designed for unified sound layer (or whatever it's called) or if your nearest computer suppliers had decided to sell only certain few selected products. Then you basically didn't have much choice.
But nowadays there's no reason to let them off the hook! If what I've read about them INTENTIONALLY disabling features to boost their new sales is truly correct, I honestly hope all the people involved with the decision lose their jobs.
Because that kind of behaviour is wrong, disgusting and outright despicable. Yes, I know it's "business", but COME ON, you have to draw the line somewhere.

I for one, from this day forward, will recommend everybody to stay away from all products from Creative (soundcard, webcam, no matter, ALL). It doesn't even make it ok, if they say they'll improve from now on.
It's like you found your boy/girlfriend cheating on you, and he/she said it won't happen ever again. Damn right it won't happen again. You're through with them...

People should keep making a ruckus of this. Because if people let things like this slide, they sure as hell will continue ripping people off their monies in the future.

"The cat doesn't know the stove is hot until it burns itself..."
I personally think Creative is in need for a lesson. And they shouldn't get away from this with just a slap on the wrists...

Rant over.

Daniel_K has decided not to mod drivers anymore.

Creative is now going to release the X-FI 2, so that people suffering from crippled cards will have something else to upgrade to.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vist...

Creative needs to fire a PR guy or two and hire some driver engineers that can actually write decent Vista drivers and stop with the BS about Vista. Just make it all work as it does under XP. Period.

Haha, awesome journalism again :-) Love that title. I already pointed out in the original news item discussion about this, but here it goes again:

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vist...

"I checked with management, and it was decided we would bring back the Audigy Support Pack thread and allow you to continue in that endeavor. As long as no intellectual property of Creative is distributed, we will have no problem with it. I will get the thread reposted shortly."

This was posted Friday afternoon. It has nothing to do with the public outrage from the weekend and beginning of the week. It`s enough to read the original Creative announcement and Daniel`s "What Creative didn`t like" section. They match nicely.

Point is, nobody "did a 180", the situation is the same as when the first announcement came with the addition of "we will work with him bla bla bla" for a bit of crowd control...

It's interesting that Creative seems to be releasing the same hardware in new packaging and slightly modified. I mean if a Live! is capable of X-Fi, then why is Creative releasing products. To refresh their product line? It's a stupid idea and people should stop wasting their money on a company that is cleverly duping them.

A long time ago, I once went to a football camp as an advisor and shared a room with a sales rep from Creative. He was so full of himself that when I asked him why Creative didn't move into the wireless speaker area using bluetooth, his rude response was, "What don't you think that we've thought of that? It's just too expensive to do?"

I think the problem with Creative is that they don't actually have new products to release. Sound is sound. It's not gonna improve the way graphics improve. Creative needs to find a way to stay alive. Therefore, release the same old product that they've been releasing for the last 8 years.

Daniel_K only proved that Creative was releasing the same buggy junk as usual: only this time we now have proof that Creative is intentionally crippling their hardware to make people buy their new hardware.

Boycott Creative!

Rely on on-board sound. It'll save you money and use less of your computer's resources.

Madness? This. Is. Creative!

Stupid multiple personality communication like this has long been a hallmark of Creative Labs.

As for the modder, I have every sympathy for him. After being told that the solution to my software issues was to 'upgrade' my Audigy 2 to an Audigy 2 ZS, I have had no faith in Creative's ability to make even the simplest functions work.

At least I'm finally free of them. With X-Fi having no serious Linux support and no hardware mixing capabilities there, there's really no reason but inertia to have one of their great cards and their awful drivers.

I call BS. If they truly supported "independent driver development by independent third parties", they would provide the hardware specs to the Open Source community, in order to facilitate the creation of fully functional X-Fi drivers for Linux.

I didn't realize his drivers effectively changed inferior products into X-Fi products. Those drivers are amazing, and this man is a hero in the tech world.

As for Creative, what do they mean by "all except the forbidden drivers" ?

Hey TechReport, how's your new Asus Xonar sound card review coming along?

Thank you for clearing that up. There is so much crap flying around over this right now.

It does depend on what you use... try to use a halfway decent pair of headphones with an onboard solution, and odds are good you won't be able to place an order fast enough with your favorite vendor for a discrete soundcard.

Oh boy, I sure am glad I switched over to onboard audio...
And if you feel like you don't want to tolerate Creative's actions, then don't support them. Buy from someone else next time.

The power of the Internet to punish consumer product's companies is impressive.....bout damn time.

The message from creative has been removed from the forum. Maybe they changed their mind again.

Wouldn't it be nice if they just did a 180 and started developing decent drivers for everything? :) These cards are some great engineering.

I realize though they want to save money on development costs, and that the company isn't exactly raking in the dough by any stretch of the imagination. It's been getting worse for them throughout this entire decade pretty much.

Companies just can't make it on sound cards. How many have given up on this particular market?

'can't stop the signal, Mal.'

wow, you can just smell the bullshit from all the way across the country on this one. Did creative think they could push people around? The people have spoken, and they (creative) are in no situation to have a bad rap these days.

Haha, you do support them after all? I couldn't tell.

The Article title should read :

"Creative supporter and enthusiast threatened by giant scared vendor has ass handed to self by 20,000 pissed off consumers."

#1 indeed...

Does anyone else find the whole, "We don't have the resources to create drivers for legacy products (even though they're on the same damn hardware platform)" rather specious?

what creative really needs to do, is completely stop crippling their software.
Sure, they may allow dan to fix it now, but he isn't going to do it forever, and it won't always be perfect either.
They just need to quit screwing their customers period.
It's an immoral business practice, and will only cause lost sales in the long run.

Too little and too late, Creative.

So Creative DOES get their way: this guy can post the modified drivers that Creative "blesses" as ok? He should pass on his work to some other site so that all the "hidden" features can be released every driver update.

It makes sense for Creative to try and force upgrading, but they can only hold back so much. Users *will* find a way and *will* share their methods (especially when Creative is CHARGING support for their drivers).