From
Barry Goffe
Director, Windows Vista Ultimate
Microsoft Corporation

When we launched Windows Vista in January 2007, we identified Windows Ultimate Extras as a unique series of add-ons that would be available to Windows Vista Ultimate customers. To date, we have released four sets of Extras – Windows Hold’Em, 16 Language Packs for the Windows multi-language user interface, Secure Online Key Backup, and Windows BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool. We want to let our Windows Vista Ultimate customers know that we are actively working to deliver the remaining Extras that we identified in January. Our goal is to provide the highest-quality, most secure and reliable offerings, and as a result we are continuing our work on these offerings. We apologize for taking so long to provide a status update to customers.

We intend to ship Windows DreamScene and the remaining 20 Language Packs by the end of the summer. We will not ship the last two Extras showcased in January (Windows DreamScene and the remaining 20 Language Packs) until they meet the high quality bar required by our enthusiastic customers—and we believe that we can achieve that bar by the end of this summer.

Source:

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This is what Michael Dragone from Ars Technica posted:

We’ve been testing the iPhone for a few days now, and while it’s still too early to reveal the full results of our testing, we feel compelled to note that the iPhone and Windows Vista do not always play well together. If you’re heading out to pick up an iPhone and you’re a Windows Vista user, be prepared to wrestle with your computer.

You might want to take a look at the comments there too:

see: http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?HeadlineIndex=40022

I know it’s just because we’re the coolest box that you picked ours to abuse. And, while I like Emerald and Ruby fine as names, if you want all the features, come on, you want ours. Does Ruby sound more ultimate than Ultimate? No. If Microsoft adopted a gem theme, we’d be Dawnstone.

WSUS and Ultimate Extras

Many Ultimate users will have never heard of WSUS, but a vocal minority will be interested in this blog entry. Currently, if your computer is administered by WSUS 2.5, you cannot install Ultimate Extras. So what’s going on?

First, for those not in the know, WSUS is Windows Server Update Services, a technology that allows IT administrators to deploy the latest Microsoft product updates to their users’ computers, or block updates they do not want users to install. If you are a home user, it is very unlikely WSUS is in your house (and you know if it is). However, if you are running Windows at work, then your company may have deployed WSUS.

If you want to see if your computer is administered by WSUS, it is easy. Open the Windows Update control panel and look at the line of text which begins “You receive updates:” If the text after that is “Managed by your system administrator” then WSUS is active, otherwise, not.

This all is very technical, and might sound pretty far afield from Windows Ultimate and Ultimate Extras, but it’s not. For instance, a number of small businesses are choosing Ultimate for its complete feature set

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While looking at our bandwidth usage spike after we posted the wallpaper, I was reminded of a conversation that Alex and I had about the Ultimate video we posted a few weeks ago. You saw the final version of the deployment (soapbox + download center), but there is a funny story behind how we decided to use those technologies that I can’t resist sharing.

The versions we posted, which are already much smaller than the original raw video, are still about 100 MB. Alex, since he was the one who put all the time into capturing the video’s content, was very eager to make it live. He thought the quickest way would be to use this site’s new download section. And of course he’s right. But that suggestion led to the following conversation.

Erik: There’s no way we should do that.
Alex: Why not?
Erik: We’ll run out of our bandwidth allotment.
Alex: Don’t we have infinite bandwidth?
Erik: Well, effectively. But not for free, we’ll start paying for it.
Alex: Really, when?
Erik: I don’t know. I haven’t seen our hosting contract.
Alex: How much are we talking? We have money for this sort of

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Have you ever asked yourself:  What are the attributes of a great piece of content for Windows DreamScene?  I get asked this question a lot, particularly from people who are trying to create their own.  The answer is rather long, so why not blog about it :)? 

Turns out we think about many aspects before we deem something DreamScene worthy.  I usually break my answer in three sections: 1) attributes of the content; 2) attributes of the rendering and 3) attributes of the encoding.  What follows is an explanation for each of these sections…

From a content perspective:

• Keep the camera angle static, so no zooming, panning etc or people will either puke or turn you off after a few seconds
• Try to bring interest in the top quarter and bottom quarter of the video so that you can get motion coming through the glass surfaces in Vista
• Keep the loop to about ~30 seconds in length
• Make sure the content is visually appealing, and the composition of the frame is appealing
• Beware of the areas of motion.  Make sure that where there is motion, that the motion is not distracting.  Make sure the type of motion doesn’t make folks dizzy or lean to one side etc
• Make

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