Full info at this Wired News article. The gist of the problem is this: Creative Labs has written their sound card drivers (the software that tells your Operating System how to use the hardware) so that they don’t work very well on Vista on older hardware, thus encouraging people to upgrade to newer, “more compatible” hardware.
And when someone found this out and in the processed fixed the drivers so they worked on the older hardware again? He got threats from Creative, legal ones.
It’s time to Boycott Creative. Don’t by their hardware any more!
Creative has the right to preserve the sanctity of their drivers and programs. They should have tried asking him nicely first though…he’s just this guy, you know?
As for Creative purposely hampering their cards’ performance on older hardware, that makes no sense…if someone purchases a new computer then there’s the possibly of their card getting replaced by an on-motherboard audio chip that, out of the box, sounds better than theirs on the old system.
Charging for software that enables features that could work in the existing drivers, however, is a money grab. Screw you Creative!
I disagree with you on so many levels.
Their drivers and programs were purposefully hampered and someone came along and fixed that and the shut him down. That’s not “preserving sanctity” that’s “preserving underhanded tactics”.
If you read the article, the guy found out exactly where they turned off many features for specific hardware sets that are enabled for those same cards in XP! Their disabling was blatant and unethical, and their response wasn’t “oh snap, that was, uh, a mistake” it was “hey stop fiddling with our software or we’ll sue you”.
Fuck you Creative. If throwing away my Audigy cost you money right now I’d do it.
While I think this is horrible and overall Creative’s driver / software division is just plain evil… I just can’t give up my love of my X-Fi, it’s the best quality sound I’ve gotten in an under $300 soundcard.
Sooner or later something has got to give on their fake crippling practices though, which have been known for a long time within the Linux community. And lately the general preference is towards software-driven soundchips anyway (although I don’t share them, I adore hardware sound), which is making Creative more and more irrelevant.
It’s just plain short-sightedness that will come back and bite them in the arse. I’m not actively boycotting them (can you suggest a superior choice that hasn’t done the same?!), but their tightly controlled drivers have meant that all of my Linux machines stick with onboard sound when I would have otherwise purchased more X-Fi cards.
As far as ethics is concerned, this is the same company that removed themselves from NASDAQ to avoid “burdensome U.S. reporting obligations”. I don’t think they much care for answering to anyone.
I am now on a quest to screw and badmouth creative labs anywhere and everywhere I can. I think they SUCK for the HORRIBLE drivers in windows 2003, vista and for all the old cards.
The board and the president and CEO and VP of engineering and the CTO of creative labs should all have a leg removed as punishment for the horrible things they have done to the quality of the SB/Live/Audigy/XFI cards.
If I was a Fascist Dictator I would hold Creaf’s CEO and Bill Gates under gunpoint and force these two pukes to get :
EAX1-5, A3D, DirectSound all would be open sourced. Period. Both companies will now reveal all source for anything related to sound. EAX will be forcibly given to all competitors.
Windows 2003 and Vista (SP1) would be forced to have an option to enable sound acceleration. If every game does not work as it did in Vista AND Windows 2003/XP64 within 1 month, there will a price to pay.
Fairly to comply will result in death, and the next CEO or whoever will be subjected to the same fate until the failure is corrected.
I’m prepared to invoke Godwin’s Law on the above post.