Creative caught crippling their products!!!

[chaksq]

I honestly think this whole thing can be summed up by this: Yes, legally, Creative had every right to do what they did. But where does it stand morally?

A very good question. I see this as a problem with Capitalism itself. As an economic system, capitalism can only function through self serving means. Someone must always take advantage of someone else in order for capitalism to succeed and to succeed in capitalism. Creative used to make great products, in fact i still have my old original SoundBlaster 16 somewhere, but due to capitalism they essentially have to be greedy to survive and therefore have to undercut their customers.

[crenn]

And the plot thickens!

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...hread.id=31250

[Crimson Sky]

As for me, all Creative product will be removed from my house. X-Fi, speakers, everything...

-=TD

Cool! I'll take them

[Xpirate]

From what I read in the articles, Creative did not really cripple their products. They were just too lazy to provide updated Vista drivers, so they told the public that their old products were not compatible with Vista.

Then they got mad at this guy for proving that their old products really are Vista compatible.

[J-Roc]

There are a lot of responces to this and i dont have the time to read through them all.

Companies have been doing this sort of thing for years. Intel does it. Celerons are P4 chips with some options disabled. Graphics cards are the exact same. It seems fitting that sound cards would disable some options to make diffrent class products.

Would you boycot intel if you found out that your celeron processor wasnt vista compatible but if it had all its options enabled like a P4 that it would be?

This is all more to the fact that they created hype about the whole thing by deleting the dudes posts off the site.

[Tech-Daddy]

From what I read in the articles, Creative did not really cripple their products. They were just too lazy to provide updated Vista drivers, so they told the public that their old products were not compatible with Vista.

Then they got mad at this guy for proving that their old products really are Vista compatible.

The guy was working on their drivers. He was able to point out where Creative inserted bugs into the drivers to make them not work. He was able to point out where Creative put their OS validation, whereby, if you were running on Vista, the portions of the software would not work....

There were other users that used the sound card drivers from XP, and had them installed on their Vista machines, and the cards worked fully. It was the new "Vista Compatible" drivers that broke their stuff. And it was "broken" on purpose.

[Tech-Daddy]

There are a lot of responces to this and i dont have the time to read through them all.

Companies have been doing this sort of thing for years. Intel does it. Celerons are P4 chips with some options disabled. Graphics cards are the exact same. It seems fitting that sound cards would disable some options to make diffrent class products.

Would you boycot intel if you found out that your celeron processor wasnt vista compatible but if it had all its options enabled like a P4 that it would be?

This is all more to the fact that they created hype about the whole thing by deleting the dudes posts off the site.

Your logic is flawed in that, when you buy a Celeron, you know you are buying a Celeron.

A better comparison would be:

"Would you be pissed if you bought a Q6600, only to have 2 of your CPU's removed/disabled by Intel because they wanted you to upgrade for that new OS?"

That, is *precisely* what happened here. People bought a premium sound card a few years back, a sound card that worked without issue... *until* they installed it into Vista, and Creative crippled the card because they wanted the users to upgrade.

That is what we are talking about here.

Crimson... don't tempt me!

[Drum Thumper]

"Would you be pissed if you bought a Q6600, only to have 2 of your CPU's removed/disabled by Intel because they wanted you to upgrade for that new OS?"

And then there's the flip side of the coin with AMD's Tri-core Phenoms, which may or may not be quads with a defective core. They've taken a bit of heat from just mentioning that they are going to offer these chips. Personally, if the price was right, hell yes I would buy one.

The biggest difference here? You know up front you're getting three cores.

[vastonecat]

A very good question. I see this as a problem with Capitalism itself. As an economic system, capitalism can only function through self serving means. Someone must always take advantage of someone else in order for capitalism to succeed and to succeed in capitalism. Creative used to make great products, in fact i still have my old original SoundBlaster 16 somewhere, but due to capitalism they essentially have to be greedy to survive and therefore have to undercut their customers.

Ahh yess but take a look at what happens to a company when they lose sight of thier own decency and go for just the money. they fold or get shut down like Enron, or Bear Sterns, or any number of others in the past few years. The Main Factor in thier demise? Greed, uninhibited greed. If these corproations would treat people with decency and not try to squeeze us like lemons then they would survive even thrive much longer than they do. Yes there are large corporations that try to squeeze yet they still thrive, but are they deceiving us in a manner like Creative? Probably not, merely taking advantage of a lack of competition. Which I can live with a lot more than Crippling the product after purchase.

[Tech-Daddy]

And then there's the flip side of the coin with AMD's Tri-core Phenoms, which may or may not be quads with a defective core. They've taken a bit of heat from just mentioning that they are going to offer these chips. Personally, if the price was right, hell yes I would buy one.

The biggest difference here? You know up front you're getting three cores.

Depending on pricing, these triple cores could be a nice boon for AMD.

"How can we make money off of these yields where we are only getting 3 of the 4 cores?"

- "Make a new market, and let the public decide..."

It costs them nothing right now, as it is not a new product, only an "incomplete" product that is sold as such, just as you said.
.....

But it is still *not* compariable to what Creative is doing....
though intriguing none the less!