This is really hijacking the thread, but I wanted to interject just a tiny bit. A friend of mine back in my college years did an internship with 'creative.' He spoke of them very highly and was in the QA department during his time there. I think it is important to remember that a support forum will only contain people complaining about problems. It doesn't make problems any less real or important to the user, but let's not write off an entire company because they offer a support forum for people to sound off.
I think that the reason to own a sound card is a lot different today than it used to be. People who are doing music production in their own homes have become the primary audience in place of gamers. Onboard sound suits most people just fine, until/if it dies and needs repair with a sound card.
I have had plenty of software bugs related to defects with games, I end going to the support forum, and usually I find that it is a certain demographic that gets the crap end of the stick. Usually a minority. That's just the way technology is. Do you remember when vista came out and graphics cards were a dime a dozen for defects? Does it mean that nvidia/ati went down the tubes as companies because of that hiccup? Windows 7 is pretty new, give them time. It's going to affect consumers who are getting the latest and greatest products; of course it is going to affect folks on the bleeding edge. That is a fact about technology adoption.
