Creative Labs messsed up pretty badly!

Kizzume

They have purposely crippled their drivers for their audio cards for Vista so people have to buy new cards in several months that are FULLY Vista compatible. Crippled on purpose.

Then when someone makes 3rd party fixes to the drivers, Creative Labs decides to go after him for it because of Intellectual Property rights.

Here's their 200 page thread on their support forum.
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Here are a bunch of news articles about it:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&um=1&tab=wn&q=creative+drivers+vista+daniel_k&btnG=Search+News

They have had driver issues for quite a while, forcing people to install a bunch of crap just to get basic functionality, but they never CRIPPLED the drivers on purpose before. This issue is really hurting them. Their stocks today have already dropped 4%. People are boycotting them, and some people are trying to see if a class action lawsuit can be made against them for falsely advertising their cards as "Vista ready".

jq · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 1089

I have a creative labs zen M:60 GB MP3 player, and I love it. Extremely reliable, durable, and good battery power.

HOWEVER

I didn't notice what pricks creative labs are until I got my new computer and couldn't find my old media explorer disc. So I went to their web site to try to download it. Well, they have everything BUT media explorer for M60 there. They have all the shitty resource hogging additions that I hate and don't want and can't use without media explorer. But their media explorer, not on there.

So then I looked for it on download.com. No such luck. Looked for it as a torrent; no such luck. Googled it and found a message board where someone was asking about getting it and where they could download it from.

The response was from the moderator, who said something to the effect of "I had the same problem with mine a few months back. I ended up calling their customer service and asking where to find it. Sorry, Creative Labs goes out of their way to make sure you cannot download media explorer. It has to come with the device or you have to order another disc through customer service or their web site."

Then it all started making sense.

I now just go through windows media player sync and add music that way. I am not about to unnecessarily pay for something twice.

Pricks.

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:18 pm Post subject:

They've proven to be worse than Microsoft and Apple put together.....

jq · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 1089

I don't know if I would go that far or not. Windows and Mac both piss me off almost endlessly. Especially apple. Man, they just have to have EVERYTHING in a different format, don't they?

Today I brought my computer over to my parents house but I forgot my keyboard. Well, they only have mac. So, do you think the mac keyboard and mouse would work on my pc? Of course not. Why would it. After all, they are both USB, both EXTREMELY BASIC ELEMEMNTS OF A COMPUTER, etc. But nah, it was no go.

I also hate this whole AAC/WMA thing going on. Pisses me off. My brother has like 10,000 songs that I don't have, but they are all in AAC so they are worthless to me. My MP3 player only plays MP3 and WMA.

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 10:05 pm Post subject:

The mouse, probably not, but I thought their keyboards worked on pc's..... hmm.... that bites...

I know that usb pc keyboards work on the mac....

But seriously--crippling the software on purpose for Vista users so people have to get newer cards? Sound card technology hasn't changed in a LONG time, so it seems silly that they'd do this kind of crap.

There are so many other stories I can give you about Creative and their habit of making horrible drivers, mostly on purpose.

Hackfest · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 402

Google an AAC converter. I'm sure I've used a free one before.

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 10:17 pm Post subject:

Well, that does work, but in every conversion there is a loss, unfortunately. Sad

But true, there are converters.....

jq · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 1089

Kizzume · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 11:34 pm Post subject:

About AAC though--I must say that I think it is a very good format that is superior to MP3 as far as being a more efficient compression--I believe it takes a little more processing power than mp3's, but the same filesize song will offer superior sound with an AAC over an MP3. OGG is a great format too, but many media players won't touch them, which is the only thing that keeps me from using it. If it starts to pick up popularity, I'll start using it encode my stuff in a heartbeat. The reason OGG is not used by Apple or Microsoft or RealNetworks media players is because it's open source which would be a threat to their proprietary formats. Roll Eyes