CREATIVE LABS JUST cant stay out of the news this week, unfortunately for the company its all bad.

Weve been following Creatives lacklustre support of Vista for some time now, including this piece from February 2007 which not only prompted a response from Creative but also prompted readers to mail us asking for further prodding of the sound-card producing behemoth. Earlier this week Creative released an involuntary adult movie cleanser, which didnt go down to well with some of our other readers.

Last month the company released X-Fi specs to open source coders, having promised Linux drivers for two years and only releasing a half-crippled beta driver - for the X86-64 architecture only, compiled with a back level version of GCC. Basically this release enabled people with spare time to do the hard work for Creative, which the company couldnt be bothered with, to ensure their products worked on their choice of operating system.

You might not find it so surprising the company doesnt product much in the way of Linux driver support, not all companies do, but more surprising is the quality of support offered for the mass-market operating systems used on the majority of new consumer PCs -Windows Vista.

The driver packages on offer for various Creative products are so poor, that a lone hero by the name of Daniel_K has produced a variety of altered drivers and packages that allow users to utilise their cards successfully on Vista, without a sub-standard feature set and continuous crashing.

Finally, after allowing Daniel_K to offer this service to Creative customers for a lenghty period - something Creative should have been doing from the start - a Creative spokes person demanded the user removed all links to his packages and stopped posting any more. You can read the forum announcement here.

As another poster points it - theres no doubt what Daniel_K has engineered violates the EULA that comes with Creative drivers and products, nor is it acceptable to accept money donations for other peoples IP. However, if Creative wont offer customers the same feature set on Vista that appears on XP, and if Creative will not offer satisfactory driver support to a multi-million selling operating system, what does the company expect?

The furore on the forums saw a plethora of customers state theyd never touch a Creative product again:

"As for Creative, this is the worst attitude to the customers Ive ever seen. I will certainly never buy any Creative product in my life and will advice against doing so any people I know. Bye Creative!" said alniks.

Toronto699 followed up with: "Bye Creative , your vista drivers are awefull , ill not buy or recommend any Creative product to anyone after reading your reaction to some very good drivers that creative is unwilling or unable to write...your support is terrible". Spelling mistakes left intact.

Phyltres comments share similar sentiment with many other posts: "With this, youve lost another customer, Creative. Ive been using this X-Fi in Vista for over a year now, and putting up with the glitches and the badly written software. Because your development team (although I cant imagine youre paying even a single person full-time for what were seeing) would not work with us, the community was forced to work together to clean up your mess."

Creative has once again produced a master-stroke of bad publicity (at the time of writing the forum announcement appeared on Slashdot) and a potential massive backlash from its own user community. Who is to blame? Only Creative, whose ineptitude at producing and releasing drivers has caused the company only further misery in the long run.

One of Daniel_Ks closing comments summarised the situation for us all:

"The funny thing is that you are faster protecting your technologies and intellectual properties than providing improved drivers and software for your customers."

Full forum post here
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

THing is, they have never been able to write drivers for toffee anyway.  I remember a couple of us getting our heads together and working out a decent Sound Blaster driver in Windows 98 because it used to crash for fun.

QuoteI 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.
 
 
Dale

They allowed the drivers minus the donation link back on the forums after the uproar

Soundblaster for DOS was ok but that is a while ago now

well a number of companies have been bad with drivers for since forever.
Hardware companies now and again or some just constantly do not grasp that making the kit is one thing but the software and drivers are just as if not more important. Nvidia and ATi have had their moments in this regard and it is ALWAYS been the case that good drivers can boost perfomance/quality and more and it still baffles many to why such companies are so bad at it a lot of the time and just how amazing one guys attempt at his own can be better then a multi million dollar company.

Creative have been consistently sh*t for years, I wouldnt touch anything of theirs at consumer level now.

My prediction of how much impact all this internet furore will have is a big fat zero.

The people who buy these things are pc world shoppers - they arent people who read zomg lol wtf forums day in and out...

Who are the top dog at the moment then in the sound card buisness?  M-Audio?

My biigest problem with Creative cards is the software, I keep finding myself needing to reload it.

Havent bothered with any add in audio card for a very long time. On the ones I have had in the past its usually the drivers are terrible or there are problems with conflicts.

Now I just use the on board sound supplied by the motherboard, they are adequate for most things.

Quote from: CypherMy biigest problem with Creative cards is the software, I keep finding myself needing to reload it.

Indeed, the hardware isnt too bad, but its vastly overpriced, gimmicky and couple that with the software and youre in a why bother scenario. Terratec did do some good budget cards, M-Audio are very good. TBH Ive not looked at anything multichannel, EAX2, etc for a long time so I couldnt comment on the current crop of soundcards.

Onboard sound is good enough for most people these days, Id only invest in a quality stereo card.