CONGRATS CREATIVE, You made it to the front page of REDDIT.com, the single worst HR post I've seen by someone representing a company I buy products from has shown up on one of the largest user submitted news sites on the internet, all to show the geeks (your customers) of the world what assholes you are.

I have been a Creative customer for over 10 years, from the 8 bit dos cards to 3 separate Audigy 2 platinums... I will no longer be purchasing creative products because of this post from Creative right here. I've always questioned why Creative had such crappy support for Linux, now someone tries to help others in Vista and this is the response he gets? I now know why creative has such **bleep**ty support. LAZINESS, pure and simple. I sure hope to see you lazy bastards at Quakecon, This post will be circulated to all attendies, I feel sorry for whoever will be watching over your booth. (Don't bother taking it down, I've already snapped a screenshot, you aren't getting out of this one.)

Sincerely, someone who has spent over $2000 on your products over the years but will never give you another penny, nor recommend your products to anyone. Infact, I intend to discourage fellow hardware vendors from using your cards in stock systems. You've REALLY done it now.

A lot to web stores have functionality for recommending and reviewing products, so that potential customers can make an informed decision on whether or not to buy a product.

I think we should add information about Creative and drivers to those shops, so that other people does not have to do the same mistake as us when we bought these Creative products. If you are a Creative soundcard owner: please add a review on your favourite hardware web store.

-Creative owner for generations of soundblasters, but no more.

Having read through this thread, I get the impression that people here are missing the point somewhat. If you look at, for example, the advert from the Creative website for the Audigy SE (http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=205&product=14257) you can clearly see that one of the advertised features of this card is EAX 3.0, therefore users who purchase this card for use with Vista are not getting what is being advertised, the fact that people on the Internet are reporting that the card comes with a Vista Certified logo on the box is just misleading them because they believe that the card will work perfectly under Vista. Due to the fact that Vista users are not getting what they payed for, charging them extra for an addon that only restores functionality that their cards where meant to have in the first place is illogical, immoral, and unfair.

Yes, Legally Creative are within their rights to remove any material that doesn't comply with their copywrite procedures, but the question is not of legality, it is of business eithics, and from where I am standing, Creative are injecting a mixture of corporate greed, and poor business ethics to try and screw their customers out of every penny that they can. The fact that Daniel_K is able to make functions work on Windows Vista, as a lone modder when their driver team have been unable to do so for more than a year, is just an incredibly poor reflection on Creative, and something they should be patently ashamed of. Creative have the capacity and capability to make working drivers, they just choose not to because they are trying to strong arm customers into buying more updated cards, instead of receiving the support that they rightfully should for products that are, lets face it, far from the end of their useful service lives.

I would also like to point out that Vista was in Beta for well over a year, and the changes, including the removal of the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) where very well documented, and Creative's increadibly arrogant stance of "We will not support a Beta OS" set them back significantly in Driver development, when they could have embraced Vista and worked during its Beta phase to Iron out potential problems, which most other big vendors did do.

Pretty much all other hardware Vendors have, by now, been able to get their cards fully functional on Vista with most of the technology that powers them still working fully, and the fact that Creative still stubbornly refuse to is just stupid, and will inevitably lose them customers, which is a Shame because their sound cards are actually very good pieces of hardware, unfortunately however, a good piece of hardware is only half the battle, and Driver development and Maintainance are the other half which Creative neglect.

Although I can understand the Legal issues, I support Daniel_K for giving Creative users what they are lawfully entitled to, fully working products, and instead of trying to shun the developer community I think they need to support it and learn from them. There are countless websites distributing modded versions of nVidia and ATI's drivers, yet do you ever hear of any of them receiving threats from these companies? no. Why? the reason is simple, they learn lessons from these communities of developers and incorporate some of their work into their own driver releases, and if the modified packages provide performance increases, that can also result in positive publicity for their products, which always helps. I can also understand why Daniel_K receives donations, the work he does can consume vast amounts of time, and he does it for little or no personal gain, and I cannot see why people begrudge him the request of donations, its not like he is forcing people to pay to use his software, he still distributes it regardless.

Whatever happens, Creative have scored themselves a major own-goal here as the backlash from the internet community is bound to have a profoundly negative impact on the company's image, and from hereon in they deserve every failure they get.

I can't say that I've ever bought a Creative sound card, but I can say that I never will now.

haha thanks Creative

Phil,

I registered to reply directly to you. I have been a customer of Creative since the late 90s. I remember back when I had to makd a choice between the Disney Sound Source, Voyetra, or Creative Sound Blaster. Back then, Creative had a superior product, and the choice was rather easy. Your product "just worked" and was favored by developers and software companies everywhere.

Fast forward to 2008, where most of your products are lacking either physical hardware superiority or driver support.

As a Creative owner and user, I have been loyal to the brand for as long as I can remember. Recently I needed to employ 3rd party drivers to make my recording rig function properly. By functioning properly, I mean operation with acceptable latency and zero pops and clicks. KX Project and ASIO4ALL were the only applications that made that possible.

You read me right, third party software (temporarily) saved your product from being labeled as junk and either relegated to the junk pile, or returned.

I have since then disconnected the card in favor of a less expensive unit from a competitor. A competitor I should have stuck with from the beginning.

Based on my past experience, and your cold reply to someone who is simply trying to help and fill in a huge void in your produc, I have decided to never buy your products again, and instead go with a vendor who values their user base, and provides appropriate, professional support.

You, Phil, are a douche.

I'm sitting here listing to Eminem's White America on my Creative i-Trigue Speakers, the last Creative anything i'm gonna buy.

Thank you Mr V-P for opening my eyes to the fact that you are a corporation with planned obsolesence on the brain.

I have purchased 6 sets of speakers, 8 to 10 sound cards, DVD drives and decoder cards (waaaay back in the day) remember that you caused this firestorm by exposing in plain words what you truly are, money hungry.

Byeeeee Creative, enjoy what you got from me cause thats all folks.

-Carl

fishyfool.com

Yep, me too. Like many others, I just signed up for this forum solely to reply to this.

There is a simple way Creative could have put an earlier stop to others fixing Creative's drivers. And that would have been to get off your colective butts and release proper drives yourself. Or you could have simply offered this guy a job, since he can apparently do what your current employees can't. But I see Creative has become yet another company that once the sale is complete and you have my money, you have no further concerns about support or customer service.

Until now, Creative was always my first choice. That just changed.

Those who can, innovate. Those who can't, litigate (or threaten to do so).

I have just joined the site to comment after seeing this on the front page in fact #1 entry on Reddit.com
.

Firstly this thread is now at 13 pages and I haven't seen a comment from someone "official" such as an admin since page 2. Your product value is being destroyed by yourselves, and your original post seems that you are angry because you now cannot sell your customers a new product that works with Vista. Are you comletely mad as a company?

Someone has released drivers that allows your product to work for a larger maket and you are upset with them, why? And please don't start on about it being your IP, yes I agree it is, but at the same time use some common sense and a bit of decency and work for your customers, while you still have some.

I have recently got into home cinema using my PC and was looking for a decent sound card to replace the onboard card that came with it. But I will be watching this issue with interest. If you do not confirm official driver support or rethink allowing Daniel K to release updates, or at least credit him for the brilliant work he has done so far (for FREE no less, stuff that up your business model) I will NEVER buy a product from you again.

You may think (like many) that the internet is full of geeks and weirdo's who are ignored, but you are on the front page of reddit now. If this doesn't have you worried, give the manager of BMW Lincoln a call and see how his sales are doing this week.

You have a chance here to gain a lot of respect and PR from the internet community I sugest you take it.

I look forward to the next official comment.

Hey Creative, I've owned nothing but creative audio products since my SB16. No more. Also...

Those of us who have been working on other operating systems realise that Creative drafted their death warrant some time ago. Unfortunately, their actions with this, and the fact that it's been posted to slashdot, reddit, and digg have signed and sealed it.

Creative - end users are sick and tired of planned obsolescence. With finances the way they are in the world, most people don't have spare cash around to be spending on new cards, ESPECIALLY when a prior model works perfectly fine. Whatever happened to backwards compatibility? Sometimes you need to spend a little bit of money to make money. If Creative's Vista problems are due to licensing agreements, wouldn't licensing things to work under vista have been a decent investment? Instead, Creative Labs has lost numerous users on account of poor business decisions made while their collective heads were shoved up their collective and other corporate entities rear-ends. If your plans were to release a new card that has full vista support, I doubt you'll have the buyers for it after today.

On top of their product quality going downhill over the last decade, their support is getting more and more abysmal. No company can survive without a market, and Creative is losing theirs steadily. Creative USED to be willing to share technical specifications, so outside developers for other operating systems could get Creative cards to work. They have been severely remiss over the last few years, and linux users in general have stopped purchasing new Creative products about the time the Audigy 2 came out. The fact they have only supplied a demo model of the X-Fi to the ALSA project with no technical specifications have put their support for creative projects on a back-burner. They may not have the time or the manpower to engineer a driver for the X-Fi, but I'd bet anything they would give Daniel_L the lauds (but not financial support) he deserves if he were able to help their efforts along.

Creative, I think it's time you throw in the towel and severely reconsider your business model, and your lack of support for end users, no matter WHAT operating system they use. I see you having one chance to turn around the mess you've gotten yourself into, and if you don't take that, you will lose your marketability.