Creative's Vista support is so bad - My horrible experience

Question

All,?Have used Creative products for years, but how they are handling Vista is bordering on criminal. I do not understand how they basically tell good customers to take a hike with such terribly bad Vista support. Here is my story:?Using my SB Li've card in XP. Works GREAT!? Fantastic card, no problems. Not that old of a card either. Seems Creative will not be making Vista drivers for it. WHY??So go and buy a Audigy SE card. Plug in, can not get to work. Find there is no Vista driver.
Go out and buy a X-Fi Extreme Audio card, as I saw there was a Vista driver for it. Get home, find out that is not true, only for 32bit, not 64bit.
Wait, find this section. Find the Audigy SE has a beta Vista driver, whoops only 32bit again.
Vista (released version) has been out for several months (I have had my Microsoft Developers Network Release Canidate running now for well over a month). And beta's have been out forever.
There is NO excuse for a company as big as Creative not to have drivers working and ready for all current cards, and fairly recent cards (like SB Li've) by at least the public release date. None at all.
Funny thing, plugged in the built in sound module on my DFI nF4 SLI-DR motherboard (I kept it unplugged while I used the SB Li've card). Booted Vista, and drivers loaded without my doing a thing!? Works fine...
- John ConnorMessage Edited by asterix22 on 02-03-200702:02 PM
Message Edited by asterix22 on 02-03-200702:03 PM

Answer 1

I'm on the side of Creative Labs here, and I'll say what they're probably thinking as they desperately work to get things up to speed for us. For starters, I assumed that if you chose to be one of the first to purchase Windows Vista (like myself), you were prepared to undergo a rocky compatibility period with some of your hardware, and were willing to wait it out. After numerous new versions of Windows....well hell, I figured?we all have come to expect this kind of thing at first launch. I guess I was wrong.
Secondly, I assumed that if you chose to be one of the first to purchase Windows Vista, but you were NOT prepared to undergo a rocky compatibility period with some of your hardware, than you would have perused this website's news, forums, drivers page, etc. for a little while?after the Vista release date to verify that everything?is?going to work?the way you "need" it to before you even put that Vista installation DVD in your dri've. And third....you consumers aren't working in the Creative Labs office. You've never attended their meetings. You've never been in on exactly how much work goes into keeping communication going with Microsoft, and you?dam sure don't know exactly what has to go into making these sound cards work with the types of Directsound changes that Microsoft has made. Don't sit there remotely from your apartment and tell a Creative Labs employee what they've been doing with THEIR time since they got the final info from Microsoft they needed to get to work on the new drivers. You say "fix it!" They say "we're working on it." What the hell else do you want?Fourth....don't forget that there are plenty of Creative Labs employees who have home computers with creative labs hardware in them, and those employees want their stuff working just as much as you. So here's your solution if this compatibility issue is really slowing down your life. Uninstall Vista. Put your XP back on. Enjoy your fully functional sound just the way you had it and meanwhile, keep checking back here periodically for updates on their progress. CL and CL mods.... I trust you. You've been around for years and you've offered up excellent hardware and software for as many OS's as I can remember. I'm not an expert in your field, so I'm not going to sit here, like some, and conjure up some self-gratifying scenario in my head of you guys doing piss poor work when I don't know jack about what it takes to get up to speed, especially if Microsoft has had you switching gears up until November. Your track record speaks for itself. You've always provided the best in sound. Guys, give CL a break. They've earned their stripes. In the meantime, go back to XP or thank them for the beta drivers and the EAX workaround. They did it for YOU. P.S. But Creative...just one thing. For now on, could you try to make your list of drivers and software updates for each card a little less confusing on the drivers pages? The XP driver/softwares sections are a mess! <img height="6[/img] width="6" src="http://forums.creative.com/i/smilies/6x6_smiley-wink.gif">