Creative sucks. Hard.

Creative are screwing around again
Get the community driver packs here
View the complete unedited thread here
My hatred for Creative is apparently not only justified, but shared by thousands.

An excerpt:

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

Forum Moderator
Creative Labs

Essentially, Creative has a bad history of customer support. Their driver packs typically provide less features than are advertised. Whenever a new operating system comes along (or in my case, even a new service pack for an existing operating system), Creative throw their hands in the air and shout “no!” — they refuse to support older products on new operating systems. At all.

Some of you might say, “fair enough” — but that’s not entirely the issue here. A forum member, Daniel_K, was packaging and releasing — for free — to the public updated driver packs that as I understand it were created using chopped-up existing driver packs. This was all fine and dandy until of course Creative stepped in and instructed Daniel_K to discontinue this activity, as apparently it was a breach of Creative’s copyrights.

It’s absolutely ridiculous; but you don’t need me to tell you that. You can read the thread here.