Microsoft: No Ultimate Extras for Windows 7

[Sicarius]

The Ultimate Extras embarrassment has been quite an issue since the launch of Vista, and while Microsoft did apologize and things started to get better in 2008, the fact remains that the company wasn't delivering as promised. Many users went as far as saying that Ultimate was useless because Ultimate Extras weren't plentiful, but of course those who bought Ultimate didn't buy them for the extras. And Microsoft is hoping those users will make the same decision for Windows 7 Ultimate, which won't be getting the feature when it's released. Here's the quote that shows Microsoft has given up (it almost slipped through our fingers after all this Windows 7 SKU news):

Our new approach to planning and building Windows doesn't have the capacity to continue to deliver features outside the regular release cycle. While our core development team is focused on building the next release, our sustained engineering team is focused on updates to existing features. As a result we don't plan to create Ultimate Extras.

Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009...r-windows-7.ars

[Mr_Smartepants]

I still maintain that the best approach for M$ is to have three core SKUs. Just like XP. Home, Pro, and Enterprise, with possibly a stripped 'EU/developing country' version with no media player or browser (or functionality).

Ultimate Extras should be purchased separately for any of the three SKUs. This 'ala carte' approach would solve the EU problem and allow for users who want the extras to have them.

Licensing is a farce, and only benefits the pirates, not legitimate users.

M$ needs to get a handle on their VLKs to prevent piracy. They should be locking VLKs to certain domains or IP ranges since only large companies use these. The VLK should be 'registered' by the company using it with their own restrictions to keep the key from registering out 'in the wild'.