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Dunno if any of you have been following this, but Creative threatened legal action against a driver modder who enabled features in Creative's Vista drivers.

Creative's VP for Corporate Communications (if ever there was an oxymoron) decided to post a VERY public cease and desist letter on their own forums in which he admits that Creative purposely crippled their Vista drivers for some sound card versions, and that it's their business if they choose to do that and how dare a modder have the temerity to fix their drivers and enable features that come standard on the XP drivers.

That's pretty much riled up the enthusiast gamer community, which are the only people buying Creative cards right now, and who find less and less of a reason to buy them anymore considering how good onboard audio is getting.

This could get interesting...

The story as it stands:
http://consumerist.com/373901/creative- ... programmer

The modder who got the cease and desist order speaks out:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/d ... ho-fi.html





Last Edited By: FlyingPenguin

LOL what an idiot! Wonder how MS feels about them purposely crippling their drivers for Vista?

I can understand Creative taking offense to his enabling th Dolby on non-licensed cards. However, creative should have paid the license fee and did this themselves. In my opinion, creative hasn't released a good card since the original Audigy series. I recently bought the Prelude 7.1 with uses the x-fi chipset because Auzentech did a much better job designing a card around that chip than anything creative released. Creative don't even offer separate lin-in and mic ports anymore. The have 1 jack for Digital-in, mic-in, and line-in called "flex-jack" or something. I wish someone would buy Creative and make them the company they once were.

I won't deal with them, or ever buy any of their products again. I bought a Zen from someone who had won it in a contest, hard drive stopped after about 7 months and they refused to repair it under warranty without an original receipt, even though serial etc. showed it was new.

I've got better places to spend my money

wvjohn wrote:I won't deal with them, or ever buy any of their products again. I bought a Zen from someone who had won it in a contest, hard drive stopped after about 7 months and they refused to repair it under warranty without an original receipt, even though serial etc. showed it was new.

I've got better places to spend my money

Amen !

yea, the have really dropped the ball on sound cards. and their speakers arnt great either. I have been using onboard for years now.

who made the sound storm? I hope it wasn't creative. I tell you what, I would easily pay 100 bux or even 200 if somebody made a card version of it.

Edit:

So i buy a car and then MAKE a better CAM for it to unlock more horse power, is the auto industry gonna come after me? thats about how stupid this is.

Pugsley wrote:who made the sound storm? I hope it wasn't creative. I tell you what, I would easily pay 100 bux or even 200 if somebody made a card version of it.

Edit:

So i buy a car and then MAKE a better CAM for it to unlock more horse power, is the auto industry gonna come after me? thats about how stupid this is.

NVidia made soundstorm.

When will companies learn that the more flexibility their products have, the better they will sell. That's one of the main things I look for when buying stuff, how well does it do in its original form, what else can it do with a little work.

Pugsley wrote: So i buy a car and then MAKE a better CAM for it to unlock more horse power, is the auto industry gonna come after me? thats about how stupid this is.

Actually, it's more analogous to buying a V6 only to discover it's actually a V8 with two cylinders disabled. Then, you find that all you have to do is connect the wiring to the injectors for the two cylinders to enable them. Once you start enabling them for others, the auto manufacturer contacts you and threatens legal action because the cylinders were disabled due to the auto manufacturer not paying the piston manufacturer the licensing fees for those two cylinders on your model of engine.

Yea...Stupid cars!

Wait, what were we talking about.

Err wrote:Actually, it's more analogous to buying a V6 only to discover it's actually a V8 with two cylinders disabled. Then, you find that all you have to do is connect the wiring to the injectors for the two cylinders to enable them. Once you start enabling them for others, the auto manufacturer contacts you and threatens legal action because the cylinders were disabled due to the auto manufacturer not paying the piston manufacturer the licensing fees for those two cylinders on your model of engine.

ok that sounds better then mine.

Actually, this is cool, gonna try it out on my Audigy.

Yup, Nvidia made Soundstorm & nope, they won't be making it anymore for reasons that no-one can decipher. It was only on motherboards as far as I know.

I have a Epox 8rda+ that I am keeping around for just that reason.

Pugsley wrote:I have a Epox 8rda+ that I am keeping around for just that reason.

Still using mine on my main rig at home hehehehe I may be upgrading soon though.. Just depends.. So far I don't have much of a reason to. It does everything I could ask it to do and more. I have been debating on setting it up with some watercooling and seeing just how much further it will go.

eGo