PowerWhore X-H8

I’m going to give TC about two more weeks, then I’m going to have a brand new PowerCore X8 for sale on the cheap. The amount of time they’re taking with Vista drivers is absolutely ludicrous. I have to be honest and say that I would have given them about the same amount of time as I gave Lynx originally, which was two months after the release of Vista. This has gone far beyond an understandable hiccup, and is simply irresponsible on their part.

Vista was released on Nov. 30th, 2006, if you were curious. That was 18 months ago. It was generally stable for professional use (as long as you didn’t own any M-Audio products, and why on Earth would you if you were a professional? They make plastic Chinese crap…) by March of last year. That was 13 months ago. I fail to see how a company the size of TC Electronic couldn’t manage to build and beta-test a working FW driver and set of plugins in that amount of time. It simply defies logic, unless your logic wanders along these lines: “well, Vista sukz, and XP rulez, so we’re not gonna bother until X number of customers complain.”

I’ve tested the unit extensively with my iMac, and I liked the included plugins enough to exhibit a far larger measure of patience than I would normally, once I got over my initial shock that it wasn’t Vista compatible. I even made a tentative list of plug-ins that I was going to purchase, once I had it running with my main music computer. I figure the unit is worth it for VSS3 alone, quite frankly. That is a hell of a reverb.

But in all honesty, I have far better things to do with $1500 than have it literally sit in a hole in my production rack depreciating. If TC hasn’t released Vista drivers by two Fridays hence (5/16) I’m going to offer this unit for sale for a ludicrously cheap price, and some lucky XP or OS X user can have the benefit of my costly mistake in trusting a company to be responsible.

(Note: I posted a similar comment in the TC forums because I’m not the sort to hide behind my blog.)