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New Vista Ultimate extras available
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 24th April 2008
The new sound schemes are augmented with 'nature-inspired' DreamScene themes.
In a rather delayed attempt to quell the discontent of users who shelled out extra for the black-boxed Ultimate Edition of Microsoft's new operating system the company has officially launched a pair of Extras that many are seeing as the vanguard of a new wave of free add-ons for the top-end Vista bundle.
Prior to this release, the only Extras that Vista Ultimate purchasers had seen to justify their expenditure were a poker game, the ability to add animated wallpaper to your desktop, and some additional language packs, along with some simple wizards for the built-in encryption software. Hardly ground-breaking stuff.
So, are the new releases any better? Judge for yourself: the new Extras that the Microsoft Vista Team have been slaving away on all this time are three additional backgrounds for the DreamScene animated wallpaper package and two new sound schemes.
Underwhelmed? Well, quite. Although the Ultimate Extras Pearl Sound Scheme apparently “further extends the intentionally-subtle design attributes of the Windows Vista default sound scheme with a richer, milky, more percussive sonic palate.”
Both packs are available immediately via Windows Update on a Windows Vista Ultimate box.
Any Ultimate owners here feeling justified in their purchase, or have you yet to see anything that was worth the entry fee? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (23)
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I could in theory, but it never actually animated (or if it did it was horrendously slow, I forget)
As for the news, well meh. These should have been there at the beginning, but I won't use them anyway.
I did see an M$ employee with a rather nice dripping icicle background though. It made me, and all the other people in the room, need the loo :( so he turned it off
animated GIF are limited to 256colors. Moreover, your CPU will spike at 80-100% and you have a slide show, nothing remotely close to something that could be called animated.
All this time for these things.... pffff very disappointed.
rofl at the quoted part...
new wallpapers and some more sounds are the extra features they promised for ultimate? glad I went for home premium.
over a year waiting and we get.... some new dreamscene and new sounds? i havent even installed dreamscene. and SOUND? jeezus freakin christ does M$ even knows how many sound packs are out there?
:-)
LOL. Rather pretentious sounding, isn't it?
Nha, don't waist your time.
The only reason why I got Ultimate was that I got (retail box) it extra extra extra cheap from the company I work for (actually it was the only thing they had, heh). Moreover, I wanted Home Premium + Business feature, and I do use these features.
Pardon me while I wander off topic for a second: In that linked video there is a part while the user is showing of Beryl where the bring up YouTube and load a video called "Jock Jams 3!" (an anime AMV). After seeing the AMV in the Beryl video I searched for it. I found it and saw that at least 10 or more people came to the video in the same way. So... I think you just indirectly increased the popularity of an arbitrary music video by 300%, congrats.
Back on topic. This is a sick joke right? A few sound files and a few backgrounds. Hell end users can develop that. And they could develop it faster and at as good or better quality then what was just released. They have been doing it since Win98 (and probably earlier).
Basically what Microsoft said with this release is: "Hah hah, we have your money and we don't care what you want. We don't care cause you already paid." I never knew about supposed Ultimate extras, but I guess it doesn't matter.
http://www.ultimatepc.com/#extras/products/exc_evga
Oh well...
I was expecting something useful like the Windows XP Powertoys, but this is a huge let down. Not only are those "extras" relatively useless, Microsoft is only offering them to Vista Ultimate users?! I say booooo to Microsoft. The time they could have spent making useful extras for Vista better be doubled and spent working on Windows 7!
No Kidding!