dog
http://www.maximumpc.com | XXX 08 | MAXIMUMPC 00
WHY ISN’T IT FREE FOR ME, TOO?
Dog, the March Vista Tips story said that ALchemy
drivers for X-Fi and Audigy owners are free. They’re
not—at least, not that I know of. Creative Labs
is charging owners of its Audigy cards $9.99 to
download ALchemy and enable DirectSound3D in
Windows Vista. I don’t think consumers should have
to pay for the fix. You should let readers know that
the Audigy download will cost them. If you can get
Creative to do the Audigy ALchemy program for free,
I would love to know.
—R. Gardner
The Dog looked into this and, indeed, we incor-
rectly stated that Creative Labs provides Audigy
and Audigy 2 ALchemy drivers for free for
Windows Vista. Only drivers for the X-Fi series of
Sound Blaster cards are available for free. Why
isn’t ALchemy free for everyone? The Dog asked
Creative and was told: “As a gesture of appre-
ciation to the users of our current soundcard
line, which is X-Fi based, we absorbed the cost
of development for ALchemy, so our customers
could experience the full benefits of hardware-
accelerated audio in legacy DirectSound game
titles. ALchemy’s popularity of more than a
million free downloads inspired users of our
previous-generation Audigy-based cards to con-
tact us about a solution for the issues of legacy
DirectSound game titles running on Vista. We
redirected some of our engineering resources to
develop an independent version of ALchemy for
Audigy, while still absorbing the majority of the
development cost while passing on a nominal
fee to customers.”
The Dog thinks that giving away the driver
would certainly make people happy, but $10 real-
ly isn’t an exorbitant fee if legitimate costs were
involved in its development. That you can get
hardware audio acceleration in Vista on a four-
year-old soundcard should actually be applauded
(even if the cost is $10), as most hardware ven-
dors would have dumped you in the river.
EZ VIDEO, HARD TO CONTACT
I have been trying to find a video converter that will
allow me to watch Real Media files on my cell phone,
a Nokia 9300. I downloaded and paid for EZ MPEG To
RM Converter at http://www.ezvideotools.com. It seemed
like a professional site, but I was wrong. As far as I
can tell, the site is still running and will still take your
money with PayPal but will not send the registration
name or code required to use its software beyond the
trial period of 15 videos.
I emailed the company three times and never
got a response. I also paid for Easy Video Converter,
which was supposed to convert any video format to
any other format. I did get a code for it, but of course,
it didn’t work as advertised.
Please know that this is not about the money. It’s
just the principle of the thing. I know that I won’t get
my money back, so at least let me get what I paid for.
— Lloyd KuhnleThe Dog made numerous attempts to reach the
operators of EZvideotools.com but had no suc-
cess. Your problem might be lost in translation,
though. The site is registered to a company
based in the Qingdao province of China. The
Dog also sniffed around the web to see if others
have complained about the company, but sur-
prisingly, the Dog couldn’t locate anything that
set off alarm bells. Since the company actually
did respond to you once, the Dog recommends
that you continue to email the company for
a code to activate the product. In the mean-
time, contact PayPal to dispute the payment.
Although PayPal isn’t known to be particularly
good with consumer complaints and disputes,
you should at least give this avenue a try. Keep
in mind that any dispute must be filed within
45 days, and PayPal is very strict about the
deadline. The Dog recommends that other read-
ers avoid EZvideotools.com’s products until he
can ascertain what exactly is going on with the
company. Woof.While the Sound Blaster
X-Fi gets free ALchemy
drivers, Audigy and
Audigy 2 owners must
pony up $10 to get
Windows Vista
hardware support.