well heres the deal i was sitting here reading so older articals over at www.istartedsomething.com which i frequent quite a bit...and came across this

as you can see this is a fairly older artical dated February 27th, 2007 and i have read it before.......

so why rehash old info?

well i first read this info back about a month after i installed Ultimate on my desktop for the first time and was really excited to see things like Dreamscene and other great Ultimate extra's.....

well fast forward 4 more months and here we are....

this artical got me thinkin......what did i really pay that extra money for, and what have i recieved that was so Ultimate?
dreamscene really aint all that and has been stuck in Beta for months now with still no dual monitor support....and only a few dreams to show....
i hate Poker and gambling for that matter, so that is no "Extra" to me......
and since then no other "Ultimate Extras" have come our way so what am i to think......could it be as simple as "hey dj_cityboy its only freekin been 4 months since the release, what more do you want jeez?!"

so what do you think so far? was it really worth that extra money? or do you think Microsoft is goin to pull some gusto outta there hats and have sumthin really real to show off with Vista Ultimate, or will this all really be another big let down?

The guy makes a very valid point, I got my vista ultimate as a gift from a good friend, I doubt id of paid for it otherwise. I must say im very dissappointed at what we've got from it, I mean come on what have we got? A game I dont play coz i dont understand coz ive never gambled, a motion desktop app that using other software I can emulate it (vlc media player) and its been hacked to run on all other versions, oh and ive got bitlocker drive encyption, what goods that to me I use my laptop in my house... I dont need that feature too! I thought ultimate was gonna rock my socks and "wow" me.... the only thing its done thats made me say wow so far is failed to boot several times ! well done microsoft, you've exceeded yourself i see !........................................ NOT.

you need to maybe stop the little spies that run about in the community stopping your "fanbase" distribute your precious code and maybe concentrate on keeping those of us that actually own legit windows happy.
You wonder why so many people pirate your stuff............? coz once you sell us a copy of something.... you then go all lazy on our ass and forget about us ultimate users and our ultimate extra's. I bet the next thing they implement would be "windows genuine advatage" so that once again were victimized coz of piracy and well need to do it to get our ultimate extras installed.

yeah man thats what um talking about....we obviously are thinking the same way.......

but untop of that do you know what we paid that extra money for???......thats the thing? we have no clue what were supposed to get for that extra price? what if we get nuthin.......would they really allow that to happen, or will they "throw together some schwag" that you could get by using others programs again??

not only that, whos to say what an "Ultimate Extra" is anyways...Microsoft? so are they dictating what we get for our extra loot that we've spend? apparently so.....how do they know what we or I want? they have never contacted me to say "Jamie what would you like to get for your money?"

so for the time being i guess were left guessing what we've spent this extra money on...and to tell you the truth if they dont freekin blow my socks off soon um goin to be calling in to complain.....seriously!!! i mean if you went to a nice resturant (where you know what you get for your money) and paid $35 for a nice meal and the food sucked would you not complain??

i sure would!!


peas
cityboy

Yep I see where your coming from, maybe we could get a thread going where people say what they want from ultimate, and then we write a mail to MS? think it'd work, I mean were a featured microsoft community theyre meant to listen to us...

To make this more interesting guys this is how you feel about Ultimate Vista this is how I feel about Vista in general.

Basically you have been ripped off with Ultimate with useless gimmicks.

So with Vista Its basically a new skin with some extra features yet new operating system new problems. Windows Xp is old and has its own problems I agree but just think about it Vista is basically a money maker what you get is a glass skin wow,Media Center wow Xp can have all that no new menu no new layout its basically just like Xp why not radical,Take for instance Microsoft Surface and then yo notice the difference between a revolutionary product.Thats what customers wanted from Vista isn't it? not the touching surface but a new ui a new design out the box thinking something that makes hackers go wow whats this? isn't that the point of a new operating system? especially started from the ground up. In movies operating systems are always radical why not make things that way?

Oh well anyway I don't want to rant but for me Ill use Xp till I see something worth really getting.

The way I see it is that we should of had Longhorn and Vista would of been next and been better instead we skip longhorn and get vista yet vista is less than longhorn..

So what we hope for now...

Vienna Se7en in the future? maybe maybe the same thing will re occur.

Until then I can view photos Listen to music Skin Change edit the registry Change files without having to make myself administrator of the files etc.
Customize Install any application Plug any device into the Usb and it installs automatically.

I can also browse the internet and do pretty much all the things Vista can even mimic it!

So what would I have done If I was them Make something out the box release a beta see what people want hold a conference decide on ideas plans and schedules.

If Vista was something out the box then no applications could be transferred hacked and made to work on xp..
Well I'm glad to see Surface is out and follows a news Direction but lets just hope they have a look at all the security problems that already lie in the future for Surface. I see hundreds of vulnerabilities already as threat lets just hope they get them covered.

Anyway thats my rant Interesting facts Cityboy and Lee.

Hope to read replies to my opinions I like having debates discussing different points and ideas.

Venomous

i understand where you come from Venomous and you make some great points....and this is a bit offtopic but another thing that really bugs me about Vista is a HUGE lack of gadgets, they have no WMP or WLMessenger or WLMail gadgets i mean come on.....thats just silly!!



i think thats a great idea and then the community as a whole will be able to express there views on this and be able to give input as well, who knows maybe someone will hear us....they say "power speaks in numbers"

who knows....it wont hurt thats fer sure....

peas
cityboy

vista isn't just a new skin and features, its more than xp, not the best OS, but at least its something i know we may be disappointed in what they've done but its out, we gotta get used to it.

Yes it is a sham. Quite a con seeing as they take an extra $100 or whatever just for a couple of pieces of average software

One Word "Gimmick"

Is a shame lets hope that they can make this up I do enjoy Microsofts products.

Maybe theres more to come?
But i feel the same you. Vista isn't as it seemed really as it come out to be, nothing so appealing.

Venemous i see you mentioned plug and play, I think your a bit wrong there, being that if i was to install XP now id have to hunt for my driver for the rest of the day, with vista i simply install and all my drivers are installed with it, i plug something in most of the time i dont need no CD vista installs it for me ^^ I quite like that.

But thats a vista feature, something all users got, not just ultimate. what were debating here is wether "ultimate" was a con, not vista as a whole.

yeah but see this isnt just about Vista......i am still somewhat happy with what i paid for.....but its that lil "extra" charge they threw on there for some exclusivity......that we have seen nuthin from?

so far i am 100% that Microsoft ripped me off......i have a poker game i cant stand and a Beta of Dreamscene that cant even run on Dual Monitors?
and is still buggier then an ant hill in the spring!

um glad they know what i want over there at M$...

peas
cityboy

Texas hold em'........... Yeah thanks MS, I dont even gamble.... how the heck am i meant to play a game I dont know the rules of and even confuses me in easy mode.... you could of put "snap" or something there for me!

DreamScene.......... oh yeah cos' my coreduo likes the fact that u eat 20% of its cpu then decides to crash on every reboot, classic!

Bitlocker..... coz my family are gonna steal my laptop and hold it at randsome coz my pictures are my life....

Ultimate wallpapers....... Ever heard of photoshop microsoft? Most people removed the "ultimate" tag and still uses them....

Give us what we paid for !

Thats my run down on my "extras"

good answer, its like customer support were paying for

yeah I went a bit broad on the vista issue but im just generally disappointed the Ultimate story thats defiantly a gimmick theres nothing Ultimate about it except the price tag which his ultimately a rip off thats for sure.

and Dream scene is not practical even tho its was amazing at first no its like whatever. bit locker id never use.

The Ultimate wallpapers


The photoshop wallpapers people make are better so woo hoo

Here's my rundown.

Texas Hold Em'... Too easy, I know poker and this games programming is so unbelievably easy to beat. I win every time with my eyes closed. Rip Off I never play it anymore cause it's so easy. (No online play)

Dreamscene... Sure this is cool but I don't use it on a regular basis, cause it'll often crash.

BitLocker... Can't use it because everytime I do, when I unplug my laptop I get the BSOD.

That's all you have given us for the price we paid. I say, I want my money back

so heres an even better question then...seems as though most people feel the same as i do for the most part, what do we do about it?

do we do what Lee suggests and start a thread about what we would like to see and email it to M$?
or do we stand here like n00bs with our fingers crossed hoping sumthin will happen? (we have been let down by M$ before)

peas
cityboy

I reckon we do something about it and get some attention to it ! about time we showed them that were not happy with what we got instead of moaning about it.

Yes I think that Ultimate is a let down, I am using Home Basic right now and it feels and looks exactly the same, and neither of them "Wow" me to the point where I'm happy I cracked bought Vista.

Or you could switch to OSX; that's an option too, ya know. Or Linux. Give something else a try, and who knows, you might never go back.

(lol.)

Damn MS suck...what else is there to say

sure man there plenty of options....i could put peanut butter in my floppy drive too...thats not goin to get me back my $299
nor is that goin to fix the issue that a lot of people feel as though we have been ripped off....

i have made a plan to call Microsoft and ask them what they plan for there "ultimate extras" and see what they say...um sure they'll laugh at me..but that proves a bigger point!

peas
cityboy

Actually you can forget them. what was about Dreamescene? oh i was able to do that in a better way with VLC Player, where i have sound. oh. i can even get Dreamecene, because i am from austria and it is only availabe on english systems. What about Bitlocker, oops, i dont have a TPM module on my pc, so it is useless. And Texas holdem? oh.. there i can also play partypoker, is better, because you play with/vs real persons... I am really fed up with that "extras"

well i hate to say this and trust me bro i dont mean this in a bad way but, i am glad you are hating on Vista as well...that just gives me "more fuel for my fire" honestly....

we need some kind of a petition to find out what microsft considers "Extras" or what will be coming for that matter....seeing as we have no freekin clue!

as long as more and more people feel the same way we do!

peas
cityboy

Actually I love Vista. If I have a problem, i insert the DVD and then let the PE repair my system. It always works. Actually I am just fed up i payed more for the extras, i cant even get them, because of our schools proxy. actually they are just useless for me....

True, this is a really big let down, a compete scam. Rubbish. I aggre all the way.

one of my hobbies is collecting different OS's..

linux is difficult to use if you've been conditioned for windows.
Mac OSX is good... but it feels sluggish.. and sometimes it feels to simple for me, but you never know.. you might like it
Vista... has to be the biggest ripoff ever realy.. it has some good features, new skins.. looks good, but it realy kills your pc.. not worth it realy
and M$ knows it, can you believe they started creating vista only games (halo 2 port for vista) i think its just an effort to force people into buying vista
XP... sort of an old hat now... but by far the best, you can make it look like vista, and it works faster.. i'v had it for a few years now and it never lets me down
has quite a few security holes.. but overall very good for home use

so i prefer XP.. but i would like to use vista if it wern't a ripoff

the more people respond to this, the quicker we can send this info to M$
and i still plan a phone call to them....just waiting to find the time!!

peas
cityboy

I do not think vista is a rip off. It is uniqe as MacOSX.

well i dont nessesarily think it was a ripped off, but i would like to know what um getting for my well earned money?
i feel like i made a sale with some guy on ebay with a 10% rating...honestly? i have no clue what um getting for my money nor was i told what i may or may not recieve, and hey! i may not get anything?

imagine i said "hey dude, send me $300 and ill send you somthing great" 4 months later yer all "hey dude wheres my "great" thing you were goin to send me"

and um all"oh yeah that, yeah um not sure what that is yet, so do you mind waiting a bit longer? and um not quite sure how long ill be either so....yeah"

thats what i feel i got from Microsoft right now as far as these "extras" go! know ones given me a ballpark idea of what i may get.....and they have my money...so how long do we wait is my question or better yet what will i be getting? they may not have actual software/extras to provide at the monent but i would at least hope/pray they have a plan on what there goin to give people for buying it too there "ultimate extras" crap so far?

even some kind of an update, even if it was not to be released until September or whatever....anything would be nice!!

peas
cityboy

I agree, you don't expect to pay a huge ammount of money and not get what you've payed for, that's why I use HomePremium or below because Ulitmate has nothing different, for me, in it!

if you want good features without paying for them.. i would recommend linux...

i use it (so far i dont have a clue how to use it right ) but its fast, and its roughly like vista, maybe a little unrefined

The retail price for Windows Vista is a joke but the biggest gripe I have is the price of the retail Ultimate Edition £400 or $400 I mean you could get a whole new PC for that now. To be honest Vista isn't anything special once you have used it for a bit this so called "WOW" dies out! At the moment I still don't think it stands as stable and is fast as XP at the moment which is why I still have them dual booting. Compatability is good but not for everyone so its not great. Ease of use I could also debate on for the average home user who likes basic things such as e-mail and internet it still can be a nightmare with UAC Dialogs ect.. aswell as all the different product editions too. I also would not call Vista feature packed as most (but not all) features are already in XP or optional for it such as IE 7, Windows Media Player 11, Windows Defender, RSS Feeds support and so on. Now for the so called "Ultimate Extras" I do think this is a way of getting more money out of people and these so called extras are pathetic. Dreamscene which gets boring after about 5 minutes, Hold Em Poker which I never play because I'm not into it and finally BitLocker which is no use for me as I am a home user and yet again have no use for it. Another thing is that users find themselfs paying an extra £200 or $200 odd for Ultimate rather than Home Premium and for what? 4 extra features. I suppose the bottom line in general is Windows Vista is just to catch the consumers eye and spend a large amount of money especially for Ultimate Edition with its eye candy features like Aero Glass, Flip 3D, Live Taskbar Thumbnails and whatever. These are not essential for working on a PC are they? Now thats all said you may all be wondering why I have Ultimate Edition well thats becuase I don't have to pay for it and got it legally from MSDN Subscriptions. If I did have the money I still wouldn't pay for any version of Windows Vista because I feel it's not worth it.

Windows Vista Business, as well as Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, have Aero, and all the stuff associated with it as well. So the GUI is not something that's causing customers to pick Ultimate over the other Vista's. And anyway a good GUI is essential for working on a PC since after one has been using a good looking interface for a long time, he can't bear to use one with an ugly interface. Or at least that's me.

However, there are a few things that cause people to buy Vista Ultimate. Ultimate is the only one in which you can type characters of other languages using the MUI. Also, stuff like Dreamscene attract users. Lastly, Vista Ultimate has all the programs bundled with Vista, even though a good half of them are quite crappy.

ok, what type stuff would u guys like to see in Ultimate extras, I am disapointed with it as well, but I am sure they will "eventually" come out with new stuff.

You can also take the systembuilder versiion, which is at 150 € or so atm.

Who can name the "Ultimate Extra" that was supposed to be an Extra but is freely available to download from Microsoft?

Well, cant ultimate run unix things or something? Besides ultimate, I wish that in all versions, they would put in more gadgets, like someone said before, more aero themes (ms signed, and not color variations) and more customization. Like explorer for example. I would like to move the previewer and all the other things to different spots maybe. Also I think its missing a desktopmanager, (4 desks) I know you can just download one but I want it to be integrated, with realtime previewing, and nice animations, etc. ( and to be better then the ms powertoy with xp) Lastly I would really like a gadget builder with a GUI. Something like the dashboard on mac. Those are the things I think not only Vista is missing as a whole not only ultimate.

Koss

I h8 it!

Microsoft is gonna force Manufacturer's to pre-install Vista instead of XP!

M$ you murder's!

What did XP do ever to you! It made you rich did'nt it!?

well you will be happy to know that i just called Microsoft!!

i called thins number listed on Microsoft's site:

Telephone
(800) MICROSOFT (642-7676)

i spoke with Katherine at the New Glasgow location here in Nova Scotia in the "Pre Sales Centre" and she was a dumb as a boot....now i usually dont say that cause i think its rude but ...she really was!!

she asked me for my first and last name and my telephone number with area code!

from there i started to question her about Ultimate "extras" and what extras were....and what they considered extras, and if there were goin to be more to come?

she told me "EXTRAS" are considered things like bitlocker the data encryption, simple PC backup and some other mumbo jumbo....
i asked her about dreamscene and there stoopid poker game and she had nuthin to say about that....

i asked her if there was somone else i could speak with that may be able to answer my questions....she placed me on hold....came back and said there was no one there at that time that could help me? go figure...i told her i was a beta tester for the OS and for the Live mail and messener and that i would really like to speak with her manager to get a bit of a better answer or at least some info....
she placed me on hold again....came back and said her manager was on lunch @ 6:50pm.......interesting time to take lunch...

i asked her if there was anything in the works or comin down the pipe that she may know of....and she said she didnt know of anything....

i told her that a lot of people are getting upset about these exrtas and are wondering what were getting for our money....because i feel i could have stuck with XP and came close to having all the same things these extras give me...she told me that i may want to contact someone at there Corporate Office and thats when i asked where she was...she then gave me this number and said i may have better luck (425)882-8080 and said that was the number to Redmond.

i told her i would call and said good bye!

so that was that and i got no solid answer other then "you may want to call Redmond" i will call Redmond and ask more questions...and when i do, you'll know~

peas
cityboy

Atta boy Jamie

lol you go Jamie! nice work

lol thanx guys.....they didnt really have too much to say which upset me even more...and the girl was quite....well whatever

but she gave me a number ...and thats all i need!

sh1tty thing is, i doubt there open on saturday....lol

peas
cityboy

Offtopic Comment: Not only that but it's not a toll free number

yeah that is funny, oddly HP's corporate offices didnt have a tool-free number either at least they didnt when i werk'd there....i dont really care that much though....its not the first corporate office i called before, no i dont make a habit of this either

peas
cityboy

Well, I signed up so I can watch this topic and just say that I too am a bit outraged at MS for the Ultimate Extras sham. Hope to see something come of this, if you need anybody to sign something I am willing to.

Ultimate Extras become more of a disappointment with each passing week.

Bitlocker enhancements - useless for almost everybody

Hold em Poker - meh, im not interested in poker

Dreamscene Tech Preview - admittedly I was excited about this when it came out. Then I realised that it performed very poorly, making my machine sluggish. And then the final version never came out, and I have now totally lost interest. Perhaps when it is actually finished, it will be efficient and usable

well thanx fer joining just cause of this.....i am not sure how far this will go but i am planing on calling M$ again like i said.....if we need to sumbit a petition for info or anything.....i will let everyone know, or if they are refusing to give out info...and we need to have sumthin sighed to get it.....we will!

glad to see more people feel the same about this.....the more the merrier!

i have a list of things that i am goin to specifically ask about......

an i agree with you as well Matt Sharpe....these things were exciting at first but have been more of a let down then anything......thats fer sure!

peas
cityboy

lol so was i wondering wats so EXTRA about the windows Vista ultimatee extraz....my thing is same as othere.... bitlocker = no use.... Hold Em = dont like poker or othr card games.....dreamscene = slow on my system.... esp wen i lsn to songs !! i dunt get it wts the point ... hope M$ comes up wid sum worthwhile EXTRAz... all we can do is WAIT and WAIT ...oddly enuf...M$ is really proud to sport ONLY 3 Ultimate extras on their site...lol
Hope M$ comes up wid sumthin gud
cheerz
Jack

well whether or not they come up with sumthin good, is a whole different question all together? i decided to go on Microsoft.com to check out what "they" consider "extras" which seems like the first thing i shoulda did and this is what i found.....



if you didnt know before now you know! but regardless of what this says i still have questions for them about "Extras" and a few other things i wrote down as well!

peas
cityboy