A new Internet low when I have to wait in a queue to download drivers!

[kgraeme]

Whoot! Makes me extra, extra glad I don't have a SoundBlaster. I definitely won't be buying from any company that pulls this crap.

 

[LiekOMG]

Try the asian Creative server. Its usually empty and very fast

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: DOACleric
Try the asian Creative server. Its usually empty and very fast

Maybe the Asians know something we don't?

 

[Utterman]

Dude,

What crawld up some peoples arses today??:|

When I purchase products, I expect a certain level of support when things don't work. When something doesn't work, I contact their support and either fix it or wait for a fix to come.

With creative and their lack of driver support and disctrubition is BS to me. I own a GTXP (One of the greatest sound cards IMO) and they provide driver updrive about every 6 months. Their latest drivers even allowed for a 6.1 setup with a simple driver upgrade.

To me, creative is just trying to rip people off by not standing by thier product like most companies do. They maybe saving a few bucks, but in the long run, it will hurt them more than they could imagine.

 

[Valinos]

I highlyappreciate companies that don't add in all the bloatware into their driver downloads. Everyone I know either doesn't install or disables the crap Creative adds with their drivers. Why not just give us the bare drivers for people who don't want the crap?

Also, I find it funny that nVidia, ATI, various motherboard manufacturers and hundreds of other device manufacturers can post drivers on their site without having a queue system. Hell, Nvidia and ATI tend to have rather large driver downloads (5-10mb) and there's no waiting...and there are a whole crapload of people with ATI and nvidia cards out there. The day the Det 40s came out I was able to download them in minutes. Is there something these companies know that Creative doesn't? No, the fact is, Creative is cheap and cuts all the corners possible to save a few bucks.

 

[db]

760 in front of me last week at creaf....

 

[RaySun2Be]

Finally done. :| Downloaded 4 files from the Creative site, took me 3.5 hours. I've decided to skip downloading the other 2.

If you could do multiple files, or if it would at LEAST start downloading automatically, instead of having to hang around for 40 minutes or more in order to catch it when it is ready, it might be better.

This is a very, very poor implementation. :|

Instead of whining here, I think I'll go write Creative and tell them just what I think of their downloading approach.

I would encourage those who think that this bandwidth saving, cost cutting, user unfriendly approach sucks to write Creative and tell them so.

I wait in enough lines during the day. At the bank, at lunch, etc. Now I'm expected to wait in line on the Internet? Not if I can help it.

Off to let Creative know what this consumer thinks.

 

[kgraeme]

You know, this is exactly what P2P software is best for and why companies should embrace it. I've always wondered why game demos aren't distributed P2P.

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Bandwidth isn't free, you know.

Viper GTS

Neither is their product.

So buying a product should entitle you to instant support/drivers?

Should companies hire one technical support agent for each item they ship? After all, it wouldn't be fair for you to have to wait your turn to talk to someone.

There has to be a balance between service level and cost, since costs will be passed on to the end user.

Viper GTS

Get a grip..

Yes, they should make driver downloads INSTANTLY available, maintain their support section, and offer reasonable download speeds.

Asking for downloadable drivers for a premium sound card isn't only reasonable, it's required.

Creative teh suck, ViperGTS is wrong


Actually Viper.. your animosity in regards to this indicates you may want to look towards a career change, you're getting very jaded in regards to customer support.

 

[Paulson]

They have none for the audigy?

Damnit, here I was all happy.. :|

 

[RaySun2Be]

Posted my complaint to Creative Here

I suggest you do the same if you do not like their Download Queue procedures.

 

[RU482]

loving my n-force sound!! even more

I vowed never to buy a soundblaster card again after the driver fiasco I had in my early days of computing.
something to do with the creative drivers not liking my p3 550e

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Bandwidth isn't free, you know.

Viper GTS

Neither is their product.

So buying a product should entitle you to instant support/drivers?

Should companies hire one technical support agent for each item they ship? After all, it wouldn't be fair for you to have to wait your turn to talk to someone.

There has to be a balance between service level and cost, since costs will be passed on to the end user.

Viper GTS

Get a grip..

Yes, they should make driver downloads INSTANTLY available, maintain their support section, and offer reasonable download speeds.

Asking for downloadable drivers for a premium sound card isn't only reasonable, it's required.

Creative teh suck, ViperGTS is wrong


Actually Viper.. your animosity in regards to this indicates you may want to look towards a career change, you're getting very jaded in regards to customer support.

I'm not jaded. If anything I have little tolerance for people who fail to grasp simple economic principles.

Would I agree that Creative's download system is cumbersome, and poorly thought out?

Yes.

They could improve it by:

- Making the download queue automatic, ie you wait through the queue & the download saves automatically to a location you pre-select. Having to manually start the download is awkward at best, and aggravating if you miss the download window.

- Increase available bandwidth during peak hours or reduce the number of simultaneous downloads allowed. Provide the ability to stream at least 100K/second to the people who ARE currently downloading. The queue might progress slower, but if people are not required to wait for the one minute download window they won't mind as much.

- Make more efficient use of their available bandwidth. Provide choices for download sizes, including a lite version that provides full product functionality, but nothing more. Reward people who select this option with a faster download stream.

These are reasonable, constructive solutions. People who post things like:

I had to pay for the fvcking product and that should cover my ability to download drivers.

If it was a perfect world, no driver updates would be needed, the product would already work as it should, but as it is not... at least you should be entitled to free and instantaneous updates when the product provided does not work..

With creative and their lack of driver support and disctrubition is BS to me.

Why should i ever have to download a bug-fix for any product that i have bought? they should give each and everyone a cd and a support call to tell them how to install it...

are simply proving their own ignorance.

I was able to download the 52 mb install file in well under 30 minutes, I suspect if I were to do it again now it would be even faster.

The only thing I really see wrong with Creative's download system is the lack of automation + the one minute window.

Viper GTS

 

[Utterman]

Originally posted by: redly1
loving my n-force sound!! even more

I vowed never to buy a soundblaster card again after the driver fiasco I had in my early days of computing.
something to do with the creative drivers not liking my p3 550e

I agree

I hope that Nvidia goes into making sound cards. Unlike some companies, they have driver updates that WORK.

 

[gogeeta13]

Originally posted by: RaySun2Be

You're being ridiculous, just like the typical consumer.

The problem is, the typical consumer buys the products. You piss off enough of the consumers with provide poor customer service, they stop buying your products. It doesn't matter if they understand about bandwidth or not. They want what they want when they want it.

Sometimes implementing cost savings can backfire. I know a bank that went to a totally automated branch at a busy corner, cutting costs that they could pass on to the consumer. Consumers didn't like it, they prefered dealing with a teller. So after business dropped off so much they would have to close the branch and lose business on the corner to other competitors, they opened the branch again with tellers. But the damage was done, they still aren't doing the business there that they used to, people left them and found other competitors with similar products but to the consumer, better service.

I understand about the bandwidth, cost savings, etc.

But I'm building a PC for a friend's son, I'm trying to download the drivers for a SB PCI 128 card, there are 6 files ranging in size from 1Meg to 7.8Meg, and I'm not too happy about having to wait 30 minutes per file, 10 minutes per download. That's 4 hours to download. :|
Every other card that I need drivers for it only took 10 minutes to find and download the drivers. Will I look for an alternative sound card next time. Definitely. I'd pay a few dollars more for a product that would save me 3.5 hours of download time.

But for now, I don't have a choice, so I have to suck it up and spend a few hours downloading drivers and updates when I could have the PC completed and off doing other things.

Exactly.

Viper: You arent proving a single thing being an arrogent devils advocate. You come off as an a$$hole, who thinks that companies have no responsibility to the end user.

The truth of the matter is they do. When I pay $99 for a retail Sound Blaster Live! I expect full well for the full drivers to be available to me 2 years down the road when i reinstall. This is what is expected. Hercules and Aureal and Philips dont seem to have a problem with supplying ample bandwidth for their drivers. Never once have I had a problem getting drivers for a $10 NIC, yet creative seems to not be able to justify their spending to supply their customers with drivers?

I have been 100% creative with my soundcards for the last 5 or so years, but with this kind of BS, they may have just lost a loyal customer. Some company's care about their customers, Creative sure as hell doesnt look like it is one of them.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: gogeeta13
Viper: You arent proving a single thing being an arrogent devils advocate. You come off as an a$$hole, who thinks that companies have no responsibility to the end user.

The truth of the matter is they do. When I pay $99 for a retail Sound Blaster Live! I expect full well for the full drivers to be available to me 2 years down the road when i reinstall. This is what is expected. Hercules and Aureal and Philips dont seem to have a problem with supplying ample bandwidth for their drivers. Never once have I had a problem getting drivers for a $10 NIC, yet creative seems to not be able to justify their spending to supply their customers with drivers?

I have been 100% creative with my soundcards for the last 5 or so years, but with this kind of BS, they may have just lost a loyal customer. Some company's care about their customers, Creative sure as hell doesnt look like it is one of them.

The drivers ARE available. I downloaded them with no trouble whatsoever.

If I was still using a Live!, I'm sure I could install them without incident & use my Live!.

I owned my Live a LONG time ago, well over two years. Heck, I've been rid of it for longer than two years.

But if I owned it, I could still use it.

Viper GTS

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Bandwidth isn't free, you know.

Viper GTS

Neither is their product.

So buying a product should entitle you to instant support/drivers?

Should companies hire one technical support agent for each item they ship? After all, it wouldn't be fair for you to have to wait your turn to talk to someone.

There has to be a balance between service level and cost, since costs will be passed on to the end user.

Viper GTS

Get a grip..

Yes, they should make driver downloads INSTANTLY available, maintain their support section, and offer reasonable download speeds.

Asking for downloadable drivers for a premium sound card isn't only reasonable, it's required.

Creative teh suck, ViperGTS is wrong


Actually Viper.. your animosity in regards to this indicates you may want to look towards a career change, you're getting very jaded in regards to customer support.

I have noticed that too. Viper, personal observation from a few of your other post but it seams you are really starting to dislike doing customer service.

on the same lines i will have to disagree with you. Its SB responsisibility to support thier products and keep their customers happy. Making people wait hours to download a driver to make thier product work is unacceptable.

Good for you that you are getting 35K/second transfer rate. There are still a whole bunch of us who can not get DSL and downloading a 50mb file at 2.5K/second totally sucks, and making people download a huge ass file when all they really want is a driver to make it work is also totally unacceptable.

 

[Lucky]

Making people wait hours to download a driver to make thier product work is unacceptable.

Good for you that you are getting 35K/second transfer rate. There are still a whole bunch of us who can not get DSL and downloading a 50mb file at 2.5K/second totally sucks, and making people download a huge ass file when all they really want is a driver to make it work is also totally unacceptable.

I think that as an absolute compromise I could accept having to wait in line to download the driver. But not under the current implementation. To expect users to wait, in my case for hours, and then catch a 1 minute window is simply ludicrous. For those on dialup its even worse. And when I DL'ed last week I got nowhere near 35 kb/s over ATTBI, I got about 1/3 of that.

 

[Freejack2]

I am 178 in queue to download a driver update for my Audigy MP3. It's 2am here. I'd hate to see the queue during the day.
Seems like everywhere I turn companies are trying harder and harder to screw over their customers. Sucks because we are powerless to do anything about it. They all know they have us over a barrel.

 

[TNTrulez]

Originally posted by: Freejack2
I am 178 in queue to download a driver update for my Audigy MP3. It's 2am here. I'd hate to see the queue during the day.
Seems like everywhere I turn companies are trying harder and harder to screw over their customers. Sucks because we are powerless to do anything about it. They all know they have us over a barrel.

Just don't buy their product = make them go out of business = you get better products from others who provides the services that you buy.

 

[TNTrulez]

Also, I bought a Santa Cruz so I'm very happy I didn't buy into Creative.

 

[glenn1]

For the next 100 people or so who repost the question "should i get an Audigy or Santa Cruz," i'll be sure to refer them to this thread.

If anyone who works at Creative is reading this thread, you best pull your head outta your ass and quick. Negative word of mouth in the enthusiast community will f**k you up. For every person you see here in this thread tearing you up, we're likely to wind up telling 20 computer novices (family, friends, coworkers, and YOUR potential customers) not to buy your gear, all of whom will take our opinion on the matter as God's gospel truth. You do the math.

 

[gopunk]

from their crappy crappy crappy software to their download queues, i am very disappointed in creative. i'm not buying any of their products until they fix those issues.

 

[gopunk]

So buying a product should entitle you to instant support/drivers?

Should companies hire one technical support agent for each item they ship? After all, it wouldn't be fair for you to have to wait your turn to talk to someone.

There has to be a balance between service level and cost, since costs will be passed on to the end user.

Viper GTS


i dunno what everybody else said, but here are my 2 cents...

no, it doesn't *entitle* you to them. but in an industry where it is STANDARD and EXPECTED, i don't think it is entirely unreasonable to expect creative to be better than this POS they are. say you bought something at a b&m and went to go return it (They have a 30 day money back guarantee). say you find out that you have to wait in a line for 3 days, and if you fall asleep, you might miss your allotted time window to get a refund. would you not be justified in getting pissed off?

 

[pillage2001]

Go through the UK site. It's free.