Does Anybody Buy Creative’s Hardware Anymore?

I’ve had a 40Gb Creative Zen Jukebox for about 5 years – it’s utterly reliable and has never let me down. When it dies on me I’ll certainly buy a new Creative MP3 player. I’ve never understood the attraction of ipods – over-priced and restricive and tying you into itunes with its also overpriced downloads. I regard them as only suitable for fashion victims. Chris – you used to be an advocate of emusic – the perfect match is still downloads from emusic played on a Creative device.
PS I don”t want a device that’s a phone, an MP3 player, a camera and does all 3 badly, thanks.

Hey there Chris, I totally agree with you about the software…
Unlike you, I’m an “experienced” Creative user, with a long history of using their stuff.
I personally think Creative shouldn’ve expanded out of their native market area – Soundcards. While their soundcards continue to do an amazing job even today, (I especially liked Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy 4) their other products are… well… difficult. I’ll explain what I mean in a sec – EVERY creative product I had, and I mean EVERY SINGLE ONE except of sound cards, has broken down. And believe me, not of old age. It seems like the software is Creative’s smaller concern today – it’s the quality/design. While it is really attractive visually, it tends to sacrifice durability and common sense about user-friendliness. My first MP3 player, the Zen Micro 5GB (touchpad controlled) was just WAY above all the other mp3 players at that point of time, was an awesome product – If not a design flaw common for all Zen Micro’s out there. Extremally weak ‘headphone in’ slot, wich would tend to give no sound at all, combined with the minijack being so loose it actually jumped right out when you turned the player 180*. Another one worth to note is… An expensive surround sound system from Creative… Their most powerful “Gigaworks”. After serving me an almost full year, they… began to auto-shut down each 15 minutes. Noone could solve the problem so I was left with Creative’s top-of-the-line speakers… broken forever. There are dozens of examples of how really good Creative products just break down by themselves. I swear, I’ll never buy a Creative non-soundcard product again. About soundcards… I know that Creative’s X-Fi soundcard series is really good at what it does, but I do not own one of those yet. I’d like you to do a soundcard review someday. I mean… I want you to show us soundcards OTHER than what Creative has to offer. I refuse to believe Creative’s X-Fi series is the best for PC. Help! :)

Well I have a sixteen year old daughter and a 13 year old son, she is a dedicated Ipod fan, and he a Creative fan. And though the Apple in the past sounded a bit better then the Creative, I prefered the controls on the Creative Zen Micro, to the Apples wheel. My son turns 13 in a couple of days, and started researching a replacement / upgrade for his zen. He narrowed it down to the Ipod touch and the Creative X-Fi and decided he wanted the XFI. So being a great dad, round of applause please, I not only got him the XFI, but gave it to him 3 weeks early, because his report card was excellent. With all that being said, and we all know Creative doing for the original sound card years ago, they have applied that same forthought to the new XFI and made a phenomenal sounding machine. I am an X- High End audio salesman from the 80’s, so I consider myself pretty hard to impress when it come to replacing my $8000 stereo with $3000 speaker, but this thing for $200 makes me kick my self for spending that kind of money on a sound system now. The headphones are both comfortable and sound awesome, the placement of the sound is very authenttic, regardless if you are listening to Bach or Beethoven to AC\DC; ZZ Top, AKON, or even Britney Spears. I can get all the sound I want with out crankin My Mark Levinson Amp through my Bower and WIlkins speakers and disturbing the neighborhood. Even at low volumes, the bass is full and the high hats are crisp. Hats off to Creative, and now I understand why Creative is number one in Europe over the Ipod.

Back in February, I purchased Creative FATAL1TY headphones and a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card. Prior to that, I did not have any audio for my computer other than the on-board audio output available on the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard. Needless to say, I was very excited to receive both items.
When they came in the mail, I immediately installed the components into my computer. Once everything was set up properly, all the new drivers and software was installed, I was ready to go. I plugged the FATAL1TY headphones into my X-Fi ExtremeGamer sound card, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I will say that I am nowhere near an audiophile – my vast knowledge of audio mechanics is not very vast, but I really enjoy the sound card and the headphones. On top of that, I find the Creative Console very easy to use, clean, “pretty” and functional; though, again, this is coming from someone whose experience is not what I would like it to be.
I’m still using the products. I have not had any issues at all, nor have either of the products “broken” in any way. The headphones work better than I expected and the sound card does as well. =)
I am a satisfied Creative purchaser.

I bought a 4GB Zen last year for $99 because I didn’t have enough for an iPod. Overall, it’s great but I don’t like that the software that comes with it spawns 4 processes at times.

Otherwise, it’s great.

Hey chris, what an insightful article you have there. Like you, I bought the Creative Normad many, many years ago when it was first released and i liked it very much. I bought the Audigy card too, which i’m still using on my old pc and my new pc is using their new x-fi sound card. I do agree that some of their software are not as outstanding as what we would like it to be but i don’t think its that bad that it would render it unusable. Over the years, my personal experience with Creative’s hardware and software have improved significantly. I’m thinking of getting their zen x-fi player as i really like the x-fi enhancement on my computer and besides, the ipod is pretty much over rated. Anyways, I don’t think its fair nor acurate to base your judgement on a product that was released 5-6 years ago? I’m given the time, improvements would have been made to fix the problem, if not the company wouldn’t still be around now. that;s just my 2 cents worth :)

…thanks for responding to my robot…
…i love creative…
…i type this with creative wireless headphones and a creative mic…
…that i just did my geelsradio show with…
…my creative laser mouse, 5.1 speakers…
…and my zen vision w serve me terrifically well…
…the lack of hardware abstraction layer made it a little difficult for them recently…
…but they are expanding…
…and rumour has it they are going to venture into more “pda” type devices…
…an iphone competitor perhaps…
…but my not experiencing the zen vision m or vision w chris…
…you missed out on the best creative had to offer…

I have a Creative Zen Nano Plus 1GB black

i dont think there all scams some our stupid

I have 2 Creative soundcards (PCIE and USB) both are junk, the sound is rubbish, the software does not work (and is bloated as well). Avoid

Chris, once upon a time Creative had awesome swag. My first TNT2 video card was a Creative labs 16MB version. It was the bomb. I had an Audigy I, have aq paperweight X-Fi and now own an Audigy 4 which sounds stellar in Ubuntu. I abandoned Windows XP with the BETA release of Windows 7. The OS is great, the Creative Labs software driver support is shoddy. I get terrible distortion when playing audio after awhile. It’s like some kind of data overflow problem. I don’t blame Microsoft for this. The blame is squarely with Creative. People have received responses from their techs saying that they have no intention of releasing a Widows 7 driver until after the retail release. Creative are now dead to me. Audigy 4 is the last product I will ever by from them

I’ll switch to Auzentech with the next PC build.

Long live Aureal Vortex A3D