14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Ultimate Extras are alive and kicking! And you should get ready for a download fiesta. Windows ultimate extras are an illustrative example of Microsoft's overpromising and underachieving. But underachieving is an euphemism for how bad the situation is. Back in January 2007, with the introduction of the Ultimate Extras, the Redmond company applauded a collection of unique add-ons designed especially for integration with the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista. Microsoft promised then a series of products to ultimate customers and delivered a few crumbs of the forecasted feast. Today, August 30, marked the seventh month of general availability for Microsoft's latest operating system. During all this time, the company managed to deliver just two ultimate Extras: the Hold 'Em Poker Game and the BitLocker and EFS Enhancements.
Additionally, Microsoft also showed bits and pieces to Ultimate users of the Language Packs for the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) feature of Windows Vista Ultimate, and Windows DreamScene. Not nearly enough to qualify as a final release, but sufficient to catalyze a Pavlovian drooling effect. Just in case you were wondering, no, Microsoft failed to finalize at this point in time both DreamScene and the Language Packs offerings. But the Redmond company seems on the brink of releasing the final Language Packs.
Barry Goffe, Director, Windows Vista Ultimate revealed back in July that the remaining Ultimate extras would be delivered by the end of this summer with plenty more to come after that. Then all went quiet once again on the Ultimate Extras front, until at the end of the past week, the existing Language Packs disappeared without a trace, and without a single word from Microsoft. Well, the company corrected this and stated that the downloads have been pulled in preparation of the final Language Packs offerings.
"On Friday 24 August, an internal process change inadvertently caused the current versions of the Windows Vista language packs offered as Ultimate Extras to be withdrawn earlier than normal in preparation for release of new updates to these language packs. This situation has since been resolved and the language packs are once more available to Windows Vista Ultimate customers via Windows Update. The content of the language packs themselves has not been changed," a Microsoft representative stated to Bink.