Like hundreds of other consumers here, I've taken the time to register to reply to the truly ridiculous reaction(s) by Creative.
I'm one of those guys who, after years of building and supporting workstations for a major corporation on the East Coast, finally decided to pull out all the stops, and build a high-end PC for myself. Kind of exciting when you can say to yourself, "I don't care what this baby costs--it's for me; I'm gonna go for broke!" Did my research for a few months, and took my time buying the components. The very last thing I bothered to research (much to my failing, I now see, since I kind of rushed it), was the soundcard vs. onboard sound. A favorite trade magazine of mine was highly recommending the X-Fi Platinum card, and I took their word--I bought it on faith.
I now wish I had taken the time to visit these forums, and find out what I'm finding out now--that you do a piss-poor job of tech support, and that you slap down those who have the knowledge, and take the time, to do what you should be doing in the first place. Yeah, I got the card working on October 2007--after a frustrating week's worth of effort, with no help from your "experts". And after I've installed Vista's SP1, and to find myself looking at another set of headaches, and seeing that you havent given any support but to offer a complete crappy set of drivers, and seeing the thousand or so responses in this thread, I've done the only sane thing I can do--removed my soundcard.
You see, when I buy a component, and run into a problem with that component, I expect to find the answer from tech support for said product. It's been that way since I've been building PCs for the last 10-12 years. And when you come across a company that fails to offer the needed support, and spits on those who can do a better job of offering a solution--well, basically, you gotta say to yourself, "To hell with that. I'm not gonna waste my time trying to get this piece of ...... working".
To daniel_k--I guess you're seeing the kind of support from this forum community that Creative wishes they had.
To Creative--I guess I should thank you. You've given my developer conference something to talk about in two weeks. I'll also be looking for all the negative feedback you've managed to develop this weekend in a lot of the mags I buy--it's coming, you can bet on that. Yeah, you're getting hammered on the Internet now, but wait until it reaches the mags. Basically, you're dead meat.
To the people who have posted here--a big thanks. When people take the time to register and post about what a piece of utter crap something is, you know it's not an isolated case--you know you're not alone with your frustrations. Like many people here, I will not purchase another item from Creative, and I will make sure to let everyone I know not to do the same....
