It should be noted that:

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board id=Vista&thread.id=30737&view=by_date_ascending& age=6
"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."

Though, clearly this is WAY too late.

It seems to me that IP does not further development in this case.

Rather, it seems to prevent it.

Creative does not want a person to help other people because it is bad for their business case.

That is sick...

There is something very wrong with the IP system today. It is supposed to speed up development, because you can own it, but it appears to not be that simple.

So Creative wants the right to cripple Vista users who bought their hardware. How nice...

I simply don't believe that was the intention with the IP system.

So would Daniel_K have a problem if he decided to let people download the drivers without having this donation option?

Seems like it is Creatives main legal stranglehold. Is it?

I think there is something very wrong with the concept of owning an idea or something "intellectual". What do you think?

Creative must have it hard with onboard and stuff like Asus' cards.

And WTH? The card supports the original functionality, yet Creativre refuses to support it? Oh, do they plan to sell us a second time what we hve already bought, with some sort of X-Fi 2 or something?

Hmm... Ok, guess it was the right decision to get a Xonar then. No reason throwing away money for this kind of support.

There is no IP involved here. They have disabled functionality for Audigy cards in Windows XP x64 and Vista on purpose to force people to upgrade to X-Fi even though X-Fi itself has shady support for Vista and a lot of unresolved driver issues.
Has an X-Fi been a better supported product they wouldn't have to force anyone into buying it in the first place.

This is THE sole reason to never buy a Creative product again. If they can't create new tech/innovations with each sound card then I do not see a reason to spend hard earned $$ on the next version just to get OS support. This is a VERY bad business choice aimed to harm the consumers that support them. Looks like someone else is going to get my $$ when it is time for a sound upgrade.

Creative has burned some bridges with its customers here.

Booooooooo....

This is amazing, I've been using Creative sound card for ages, I consider myself a loyal customer for damn 15 years, guess it's finally time to say good bye, and it'll be forever...

A rather sticky problem for Creative in this fiasco is that the cards which the drivers 'fix' were sold in packaging that touted the cards' ability to work with Vista. Now Creative is implying that they don't 'want' the cards to wok with Vista? Isn't that bait-and-switch? And isn't that actionable in a court of law?

I decided long time ago that I will never ever buy anu creative product because of their software support. That was the right decision and this made me feel even stronger about it.

If you are interested, you can follow the facts there:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332
242 pages of angry customers at that time, and still growing.

Note: the first post was heavily modified by the forum moderator, but you can easily find the first version on the web.

I am done with creative....

Fuck creative. Give me any alternative, and I will take it... Other companies must be very pleased>

To Creative Technology go to hell.

From this thread:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board id=soundblaster&thread.id=120819&view=by_date_ascend ng&page=1
----------------------------------------------------------- --------------------
And for those wondering why the X-Fi is so badly gimped in Vista there is one reason and one reason only,
X-Fi 2
that hasn't even been released yet but already has Vista certified drivers. How much does anyone want to bet that when it is finally released that it will have all the features that people have been asking for for the current X-Fi line up for the past year.


----------------------------------------------------------- --------------------

Here they are:
http://winqual.microsoft.com/HCL/ProductDetails.aspx?m=v&a p;g=d&cid=110&sv=&f=&pn=SB%20X-Fi%202& id=24

http://winqual.microsoft.com/HCL/ProductDetails.aspx?m=v&a p;g=d&cid=110&sv=&f=&pn=SB%20X-Fi%20Surrou d%205.1&oid=24

That's why Creative's actions seem to give the impression of being boarder-line criminal.
The question is when will X-FI have the same capabilities as X-FI 2?
Till Creative answers that this is all crap.

We have paid lots of hard earned money for these cards, how dare Creative limit the functionality!

Creative... Sigh.. i remember buying my first sound blaster product bundled with a single speed cd-rom... and then of course the Sb16, the Awe 64, a Live X-gamer, an Audigy, and an X-fi Audio... Sold that just recently to a friend. it was in it's static bag for better then 3 months. Like many posters, that alot of cash, and time to spend with one company... Especially to be screwed like this.

The saddest part, is when they bought up Aureal and killed them off. Leaving us with onboard, or creative for a while. Or those cheap cards with the same chips as onboard... So Who else makes sound DSPs? Sound Storm is gone, back in the Nforce 2 days...

We need another higher end Audio DSP / card maker. It'd be nice to see creative go under. I'd pay to see that!

Creative fools they just hurt their marketing so badly that even buying Daniel_K's drivers and freely give them away would have damaged alot less..

To hell with Creative, while sitting on their self imagined throne, in all it's arrogance, they forgot who has put them there and that THEY should have provided the deserved support, i bet the high price tag on their cards already considered future maintenance developments for current new OS releases. Whining bitches who did not do their homework that's what they are.

I am done with Creative too, the X-FI gen of cards was the 1st gen of their cards I did not buy. Simply because they are too expensive for me since I just care about gaming performance and positional/distance accuracy and not all that high value added music fidelity stuff. Gaming wise, other sound card brands do a great job for a much logical price.

And pls consider you are not reading from a value PC owner but a high end custom PC enthusiast with pretty good price/performance reasoning.

You see this again again.
When a company is this contemptuous of it's customers it's time to say "bye bye". There are some dynamite on board sound solutions these days one has wonder why Creative would expect people to lay out big dollars for their half baked crap....

Suing people for making working stable drivers when Creative can't even do the same? WTF!!!?? Well O.k they aren't suing him YET, but the actions of Creative aren't winning it any more fans and are damaging it's business.

Who buys creative sound cards? Mostly hardware and game enthusiasts. Who is getting pissed off by Creative's actions towards Daniel K? The very same. Pissing off your customer base is going to hurt your business, especially if you aren't the dominant player. To rub salt in the wound they still don't have properly working Vista drivers and even sabotaged certain features in Vista for their older cards. Sad, but I'm going to try a Xonar for my next build.