Tech Support Gets Creative

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.designtechnica.com/talkback64.html' target='_blank'>http://news.designtechnica.com/talkback64.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I am going to share with everyone a huge fiasco I found myself in with the folks at Creative Labs. If you remember, I reviewed a Compaq GX5000Z gaming system last November. This is a desktop system developed by Compaq that uses standard retail computer parts; the very same parts you can purchase at your local computer store. Nothing is integrated, and the system uses an MSI motherboard (K8N Neo 2 Platinum) which you could purchase yourself should you so desire."</i><br /><br />Lets get beyond the HP tech support sucks responses and just think about the problems that we have with <i><b>every</i></b> OEM these days. Many computers don't ship with media so if you lose your hard drive or want to reinstall you could be out of luck. Most of us have gotten used to just typing our needs into Google and then download the driver, but more and more it is becoming difficult to do so. I had tons of trouble getting drivers for a miniPCI 802.11b card that Dell sold me for my Precision M50. I said it wasn't supported but it was an option on the build to order page, i just ordered it after I bought the computer. I spend a good day downloading every 802.11b laptop driver I could find on their site before one worked. It should be this hard should it?

[jeffd]

Isn't this more of a problem of choosing a bad wifi device? ;) Should have just gotten a netgear or linksys. ^^

Besides if theres one piece of hardware thats a sure fire winner in messing up a fine install.. its wifi devices. Both XP (using an SP2 install disc) and mandrake (Linux /w KDE distro + kitchen sink) detect all my hardware (abit using barebone drivers) and even my NICs, but neither will recongnise my USB or PCMCIA wifi devices without installing from their respective install disc. ;)

Addon: After reading the linked page.. this is one of the main reasons why I hate creative sound cards. This same issue came around with the original SB Live cards. When I baught my live, it came with 3 cd's of bloat to be installed. How ever should you lose the cd's (while the cd case is large, this generaly makes you want to toss it in a storage room out of the way, never to see the light of day again) you would be SOL, the creative website only had updates, no full download for like a year and a half since the sblive came out. Infact the only reason a stand alone driver install WAS put out, was because the original cd's did not work for XP, so when XP came out, they put the XP/2000 drivers up for download.

[James Fee]

Isn't this more of a problem of choosing a bad wifi device? ;) Should have just gotten a netgear or linksys.Well I wanted it built into my laptop. The miniPCI card is like adding memory.