Am I the Only One Feeling Let Down by Creati

Question

I personally believe that I'm not the only one let down by Creative's recent products and support. I was the guy who'd always go around telling other people "Why get an iPod? Everyone has one, they use proprietary connectors for everything, the battery life sucks, and you get to twiddle your thumbs clockwise and counterclockwise as you go up and down."
But not anymore.
And no I'm not talking about boycotting apple here, I'm talking about Creative.
I'll start off by providing a little background information about myself. I've always been heavily into music and movies. My computer consists of a Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard, and 600gb of RAID 0 hard dri've space. All used for games, music, and movies.
I always loved my Soundblaster cards, even my Soundblaster li've. Then someone showed me something amazing, a 30Gb Creative MP3 player. I think it was the Zen Ztra, I'm not sure, it was a long time ago. Soon as I saw that baby I fell in love with it. It had just 0Gb less than the harddri've of the computer I owned at the time, the sound quality was amazing, and it was very easy to use.
A good time after that, I decided to finally buy an MP3 player of my own after using a Sony ATRAC3 plus CD player for so long for my music. I went to the store and the only thing I could think of was that it had to be a Creative MP3 player. That day I ended up shelling out about 400 bucks for a 20gb Creative Zen Touch. I was wishing I found the 40gb version after that but for the amount of music I had at the time it worked very well.
I think I owned that MP3 player for at leas 2 years or so without any problems or freezes before someone finally stole it from me. I guess that's what I get for lending it to my girlfriend but thats a different story. She agreed to buy me a new one right away. I Think she knew how much I loved creative products at the time (and how much I hated iPods) that she decided to get me a Creative MP3 player of course. She ended up getting one that I was looking at online for quite a while. The Creative Zen Vision: M, the 60gb model.
I was a little disappointed that the battery life was nowhere near as impressi've as my old MP3 player, but with 60Gb, a gorgeous color screen, video playback, a better touchpad than the iPod (In my own opinion), and better battery life than an iPod (actual fact), I couldn't find much else not to like.
Of course, in less than a week I started getting nothing but problems.
While I was away on a trip the MP3 player froze twice. I had to stop at a nearby store to borrow a paperclip to reset it. The second time it froze was when the battery was getting low. After I reset it again the next screen showed "Low Battery" so I shut it off. I guess Creative thinks that everyone likes to carry a desktop computer with them when they go on trips, or that they've added enough problems to the player that they wont use up all the power till they get back. The only way you can charge it without a computer is by buying a battery charger separately, something which was included in a lot of earlier products.
Not being able to find a "Creative" charger, I bought one designed to charge any USB device. I plugged it in, and all I got was a flashing blue light for 24 hours, which was when I finally decided to call it quits. No matter what I did it wouldn't turn on, the reset button did nothing, and all I got was a flashing blue light.
I get home a few days later (without any good music to listen to on the way home) and plug it into my PC and get the same problem. All of this after the recommended firmware update mind you.
I decided to do some reading on the creative forums to try and solve a problem the majority of Zen Vision and other product owners are experiencing. All I found in the forums was a large group of disappointed individuals. The only posts made by Creative staff were regarding refraining from dropping F bombs. Apparently you even have to pay for tech support?! Is this some kind of sick joke?
The message I'm getting from this is that creative is purposely making defecti've products, not only to save money, but also make money from all the people needing tech support.
It wouldn't surprise me if this post was deleted simply because Creative doesn't like having to face facts. Anyways, sorry for the long post, but I felt it necessary to help vent out my frustration with a company I always looked up to.
After this experience, I will be refraining from buying any more Creative products until they clean up their problems. I'd like to hear from other people as well. I'll be boycotting this company, who's with me?

Answer 1

I've never had any problems with mine ever. The only freeze I've had was from a file I recorded on tivo, cut commericals out in movie maker and then re-encoded to the lowest possible bit rate that that zens nati've resolution supports. Try turning your sensitivity in the touch pad down. Sometimes if you have it up to high you may have a chance of doing that (although I have only had slow response, instead of a freeze by doing that).
You also have to compare to all of the other products out there: Ipod and Zune are a lot worse with pathetic little problems (annoyances). I didn't pay for tech support?