I wonder if Creative understand that the people who bother to read forums like this are the people who are actually interested in the after sales devices/cards etc.

Best you (Creative) get the pulic relations machine rolling asap!

before this, i used to look up to Creative.

i'll say. this is a bad decision. a very bad decision.

c'mon.

you lost many potential customers.

this is definitely not the ideal way to handle this issue

sure, u have your rights when it comes to the copyright, IP and stuff

but

we have consumer rights on our side

in a way, you are cheating your customers!

you want to keep your customers

u got to have their trust

making them buy new products by crippling old ones is not called trust

people trust you to provide FULL support for your products

but

as we all can see,

you have betrayed this trust

since you are unable to provide this trust

other people from the community steps in

to help the consumers

HE is HELPING you

if you think he is wrong,

prove it

go get your development team to write a PROPER driver

if you think you can do better

you may have the best cards around

but when it comes to support

u fall behind

FAR behind

truthfully speaking,

i do not wish to see creative topple

creative ha the potential to do VERY well

your products have good potential

do not waste this potential

through this issue, you've lost my trust.

you defintely left a bad impression.

a VERY Bad impression

Hello Creative,

I've purchased cards from you in the past because I like the products. I see some user has gone out of his way to help other users using your product who you were unwilling/unable to help, with driver support. If I was a hardware manufacturer, and I was unable or unwilling to provide support for my products and there happened to be a dedicated individual, such as Daniel_K, working on my hardware to maintain it for me for free, I would feel very honored. Many user-driven communities have sprung up around such ideals, which has driven me to purchase such hardware, just by the fact that it has an active community supporting it. I think it is deplorable that your company would treat your customers this way. At the very least you could have worked with Daniel_K to try and get some official drivers released based on his work. Especially if you are unwilling to write your own drivers.

I'm sure your company has made a 'thoughtful' decision on this, and therefore I'm going to make the thoughtful decision not to buy your products in the future, even if you are the only choice available when it comes to sound cards.

Creative, you have probably made one of your worst business decisions ever. First you cripple your products by not releasing decent drivers and anger your user base. And then you go after someone who has been helping out your user base, demanding that he must pull his drivers from the net, and anger your user base even further. You have declared war on your own customers, and it can (and will) be read all over the Internet. This will cost you dearly.

Also, you just lost another customer. Goodbye!

bugmenot here!

Mirror made: http://creative.edited.us/ in one big fat page. Will update on each new page.

- Ano Nymousie

It does seem entirely reasonable to ask why people are so ready to criticise Creative and yet less inclined to criticise Micro$oft.

Micro$oft did after all release the appalling half-finished Vista, have done everything they can to force OEMs to stop shipping XP, have now stated that they will cut off the supply of XP this summer and are likely to dump Vista’s replacement on their gullible customers next year.

I had had SB products from way back in the DOS days, they have always had a bad rep for their drivers. Hardware is good, support and drivers always bad. Along comes someone that actually supports the issues that users have been having and SB do this.

Goes to show the people who grabbed the market in the 80's are no longer working at Creative , people used to have respect for SB hardware.

Some people really need to get a clue as to what life is all about. Just because its legally right it dosnt mean its morally or ethically right.

Sure you are within your legal rights, fine if you want to go down that path.

With the speed information travels these days and the fact that the companys that actually listen to what users want are starting get a following this is a bad time for Creative to do something like this.

Personally i will never buy another Creative product and will make sure everyone I know will do the same.

Bad descision Creative, I hope you get what you deserve.