The Great Dimension 4550 SBLive Foist

[hirschma]

Seems that if you ordered a Dell Dimension 4550 with an SB Live, you got taken.

Here's the story: Dell's version of the SB Live is "different" from a normal SB Live in that Creative's drivers won't work with the Dell Version. To make matters worse, Dell doesn't offer any drivers for the card that they supplied, either on the CDs shipped with the system, or on their support website.

Moreover, if you went with a sound card, they shipped a version of the machine without integrated audio. And if you use a generic card, say goodbye to the front-mounted audio jacks (they use a weirdo connector).

If you want to use a different OS than what came with the machine, yer screwed.

If you need to do a re-install of the system, yer screwed.

Dell customer care offered to send a new card, supposedly with multi-os drivers, but I ain't holding my breath.

Anyone in the same boat? Or have any suggestions? I tried to get them to replace my card with a Turtle Beach offering, but they won't do it.

Thanks.

jonathan

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: hirschma

Dell customer care offered to send a new card, supposedly with multi-os drivers, but I ain't holding my breath.

Anyone in the same boat? Or have any suggestions? I tried to get them to replace my card with a Turtle Beach offering, but they won't do it.
jonathan

I agree that shipping a card with no available drivers except XP is fine for 99% of their buyers but lousy for anyone wanting alternative OSs.

But what's wrong with letting them send you a new SB card with mutli-OS drivers? (Aside from losing the front connectors, but you'll lose them with the more expensive TB card too.)

 

[hirschma]

This is funny.

A new card arrived today, with a driver disk.

I got a totally different version of the SBLive, and the drivers work swimmingly.

I'd guess that they were sending out "bad" cards, and for the folks that complained, they sent out cards that will work in ALL operating systems. I'm amazed that they would actually do XP only hardware.

jonathan

 

[dullard]

Good thing it you got something to work. I was just about to tell you to go to the Dimension 4500 page - as it has their special SBLive drivers for all Windows operating systems. Dell tends to be several months behind on drivers - so I wasn't surprized when I saw no Dimension 4550 sound drivers.