Sound card (Page 1 of 2)

Creative cards have always worked for me, but i'm not a serious sound card user. Creative has never charged cash for drivers either. I'm for creative!

War3Pub's EVIL twatish mini-marsh martian
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Mobo Cult Drone #8, Offical Alien

Link pls. The last thread about this before the bashing came in was http://www.blizzpub.net/forums/thread.php?tid=51290;page=1 and a simple google search showed that the whole paying for drivers fiasco wasn't true.

War3Pub's EVIL twatish mini-marsh martian
Mobo is good, he is without fault, surrender your will, into his cult!
Mobo Cult Drone #8, Offical Alien

too quick too quote. Blame Microsoft instead.

IMO, if it doesn't come with the operating system, and you developed the software to fix it, you're entitled to charge money for it. Its not like they are forcing you to buy drivers that are integral for the sound card's operation (i.e. provide sound). You just have to choose to pay more for more functions. At least they do tell you about it too... and not hide it in the cost of the sound card.

War3Pub's EVIL twatish mini-marsh martian
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Mobo Cult Drone #8, Offical Alien

Why would you use Vista in the first place?

I'd rather blame Creative, since it is THEIR product that must work with an operating system. Microsoft has no obligation to tailor things around them, Creative has an obligation to tailor things to an OS.

Errrrrrr:

Don't threadshit. It has lots of improvements that I know you're more than aware of and I won't bother going into. If your hardware has no compatibility issues (or isn't just poor overall like Creative stuff), there's no reason not to do it and enjoy better stability and many other features that, again, I'm sure you know. I'm not going to fall for the trollbait here

It sure is more stable if you don't suck at setting it up. Explorer is a lot more responsive, copying files between hard drives is much smoother, the new wireless networking utility is better, smarter usage of RAM/pagefile, the new search is fantastic, better networked printer support, Aero is nice (accelerated desktop interface is MUCH better than XP's). It's minor things. It's not like its 100% better. I consider it XP SP3, since it fixed most of the problems I had with XP, and didn't introduce any if you configure it properly and don't have shitty hardware.

The new cool thing is to hate Vista, and if you guys are going to do that, theres nothing I can post to convince you otherwise. Anyway, this thread is derailed enough. If you want to further find out why I like it more, feel free to shoot me an IM.

Let me break this shit down for you.

"It sure is more stable"
- Stability is a result of good drivers and software compatibilities, and Vista has nothing on that over XP. You might not have encountered stability problems, but I've sure read plenty.

"Explorer is a lot more responsive"
- Superfetch makes it feel more responsive. I don't need faster access time to my disks, I need better transfer rate, and Superfecth doesn't give me it.

"Copying files between hard drives is much smoother"
- No, it's not smoother, it just feels smoother. Disk performance isn't significantly (or at all) increased, I have at least 10 pages of benchmarks to show you if you really refute this.

"New wireless networking utility is better"
- I don't use wireless networking, but if I did, XP works just fine, I've never had any issue. I don't see a need for "better" utilities.

"Smarter usage of RAM/pagefile"
- Superfecth sure is nice, but not needed for me; ReadyBoost requires a SD card, which I am not willing to shell out for just to get the measly performance boost to file access, which, again, I don't need.

"The new search is fantastic"
- I don't search for files on my own computer all day long - I keep track of where I put my shit and I go right to it if I need it. Additionally, indexing is overhead whichever way you slice it, and I don't need overhead. More on services later.

"Better network printer support"
- Do not want.

"Aero is nice"
- Yes, it is. Probably the only thing I actually do want to play with from Vista, that and Dreamscene + Deskscape. But again, all of this comes at a cost to application performance. I'm a practical guy, XP with simple theme fits me just fine, thank you.

Is that it? Ok then.

Here are things I don't want, don't need, and don't want to have to deal with:
- UAC (way to fuck up something that's been around forever)
- Activation
- Protected Video Path
- Bloaty services and processes (that send data to MS without my permission)
- Terrible application performance (in literally every application on earth)
- Terrible game performance and compatibility
- Terrible driver support (and it's not just from Creative)

And you blame third parties for not giving Vista a shit? If I was a manufacturer I wouldn't give a shit either. I'd do exactly what Creative did: drive people away from Vista. And I'm not even gonna talk about all that behind-closed-door shit between MS and Nvidia, they can go fuck themselves.

If MS can bring only improvements without fucking everything up, I might even give them a tip. Too bad that's too good to be true.

I'm sure people hate Vista because "it is cool", not because it sucks or anything like that. That must also be why Vista sales are so terrible, and tons of people are actually reverting back to XP. It must be so hip, to go through all of it and then denounce Vista. And I'm sure all the Vista haters are just sour pundits from OS X and Linux camp's FUD spreading (a.k.a. marketing) department. But honestly if I had that much money to generate baseless opinions, I might as well go the distance and polish a turd and make some sales profit just like MS did with Vista, right? (OH WAIT, Apple is way ahead of me.)

This is derailing, I'll give you that. But to say Creative is shit because its Vista support is crap given the current Vista is like saying a game is crap because it doesn't support Ageia's PhysX.

For about half of your points you said "Don't care" like your opinion on features is the end all be all on Vista.
Wireless networking, network printers, and searching are all features I use on a near daily basis.

Wow. How about searching log files for a specific snippet of conversation that happened months ago?

Indexing is an extra service, and it hinders disk performance overall. I disable indexing on XP anyway. Like I said, I keep my stuff organized to the point that I have shortcuts to various folders that I access frequently. As to things I don't access frequently, a few seconds off a search doesn't matter at all.

If you're talking about searching for words/phrases inside many log files, then XP isn't slower.

Of course, if there's no negative performance hit associated with switching to Vista, I'd switch for what I regard as "irrelevant" but nevertheless "enhancements" too. But you tell me if I should give up sometimes up to 90% of my performance for that sort of thing.

Hi, I am a soundcard. I do not give a shit about vista vs xp because I have xp right now which is not the point of the question. Thanks.

How dare you try to drive this thread off-topic.  This thread is about Vista; go make your own "sound card" thread.

[size=0]I can't actually answer your question, because integrated sound is good enough to me[/size]