Windows Ultimate Extras were optional features offered by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

to users of the Ultimate edition of

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and are accessible via

Windows Update Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of the Microsoft Windows operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers sof ...

. Ultimate Extras replaced the market role of Microsoft Plus!, a product sold for prior consumer releases of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. According to Microsoft's Barry Goffe, the company's goal with Ultimate Extras was to delight customers who purchased the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista, the most expensive retail edition of the operating system. Windows Ultimate Extras have been discontinued as of

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

without a successor planned and the operating system also removes all installed extras during an upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate.

Microsoft released a total of nine Ultimate Extras for users of Windows Vista Ultimate.

BitLocker and EFS enhancements

The

BitLocker BitLocker is a full volume encryption feature included with Microsoft Windows versions starting with Windows Vista. It is designed to protect data by providing encryption for entire volumes. By default, it uses the Advanced Encryption Standard ...

Drive Preparation Tool utility and the Secure Online Key Backup utility were among the first Ultimate Extras to be made available, and were released to coincide with the general retail availability of Windows Vista. BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool prepares the hard drive to be encrypted with BitLocker, whereas Secure Online Key Backup enabled users to create an off-site

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "wikt:back ...

of their BitLocker recovery password and Encrypting File System recovery certificates at Digital Locker, as part of the

Windows Marketplace Windows Marketplace was a Microsoft platform for the delivery of software electronically that was secured by use of Windows Live ID (now known as a Microsoft account). The digital locker platform was composed of four major components: #Windows ...

digital distribution Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of information or materials through digital platforms. The distribution of digital ...

platform. Secure Online Key Backup was rendered inoperable after Digital Locker shut down in August 2009.

Multilingual User Interface language packs

Unlike previous versions of Windows, Windows Vista is language-independent; the language architecture separates the language resources for the user interface from the binary code of the operating system. Support for installing additional languages is included in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. In the Ultimate edition, the functionality is made available through Windows Update as Ultimate Extras. Microsoft stated that 16 languages were made available on January 30, 2007. The company released the remaining language packs on October 23, 2007 for a total of 35 language packs. An additional 36th language pack version is available for Windows Vista that supports

traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to written Chinese, write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education (Taiwan), Ministry of Educat ...

with the

Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (; commonly abbreviated to HKSCS) is a set of Chinese characters – 4,702 in total in the initial release—used in Standard Cantonese, Cantonese, as well as when writing the List of places in Hong Kong, ...

''Microsoft Tinker''

''Microsoft Tinker'' is a

puzzle game A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are different ...

made available on September 23, 2008 where players must navigate a

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

through mazes and obstacles. A total of 60 levels are included, and players can create their own levels with a level editor.

''Hold 'Em''

''Hold 'Em'' (formerly ''Windows Poker'' as in build 5284) is a

poker Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...

card game A card game is any game that uses playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, whether the cards are of a traditional design or specifically created for the game (proprietary). Countless card games exist, including famil ...

released on January 29, 2007 that is fundamentally similar to

Texas hold 'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is the most popular variant of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five Community card poker, community cards ...

. ''Hold 'Em'' allows users to play against up to five computer players and up to three levels of difficulty, and also allows users to customize aspects of the game's appearance; the game relies on

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

to produce hardware-accelerated 3D animations and effects. For optimal performance, ''Hold 'Em'' requires a computer with a

Windows Experience Index The Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT) is a module of Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11 that is available in the Control Panel (Windows), Control Panel under ''Performance Information an ...

rating of 2.0 or higher. According to Paul Thurrott, ''Hold 'Em'' was originally intended to be bundled alongside the premium games—'' Chess Titans'', '' Mahjong Titans'', and '' InkBall''—included by default with the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista, but was instead made an Ultimate Extra because of its gambling themes.

Windows sound schemes

A total of three sound schemes for Windows Vista were released: Ultimate Extras Glass, Ultimate Extras Pearl, and Microsoft Tinker. The first two were made available on April 22, 2008, while the latter was made available on September 23, 2008 to coincide with the release of ''Microsoft Tinker''. The ''Glass'' and ''Pearl'' sound schemes are similar to the ''Default'' sound scheme included in Windows Vista as they were also developed in accordance with the

Windows Aero Windows Aero (a backronym for ''Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open'') is the design language introduced in the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system in 2006. The changes introduced by Windows Aero encompassed many elements of the Windo ...

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

Windows DreamScene

Windows DreamScene enables

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

and WMV videos to be displayed as desktop backgrounds. Windows Aero must be enabled for Windows DreamScene due to requiring the

Desktop Window Manager Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE in builds of pre-reset Windows Longhorn) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render ...

to display videos on the desktop.

Proposed extras

Proposed Windows Ultimate Extras included a downloadable

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

creator, a game performance optimizer, digital publications, exclusive access to online content, themes, Windows DVD Maker templates, and

Windows Movie Maker Windows Movie Maker (known as Windows Live Movie Maker for the 2009 and 2011 releases) is a discontinued video editing software program by Microsoft. It was first included in Windows Me on September 14, 2000, and in Windows XP on October 25, 200 ...

effects and transitions; the Group Shot photo application developed by

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

shown by

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

in 2007 also was once considered. Despite not being considered Windows Ultimate Extras, the Windows Ultimate Extras team additionally released two wallpapers (''Start'' and ''Strands'') based on the Windows Vista Ultimate retail packaging and intended for Windows Vista Ultimate users; the wallpapers were made available in three different display resolutions.

Critical reception

Reaction to Windows Ultimate Extras was mixed. While Microsoft was praised for creating a value proposition for users who purchased the most expensive edition of Windows Vista, the company was criticized for its delays during delivery of updates, perceived lack of quality of delivered updates, and a lack of transparency regarding their development. Early on, there were concerns that the features would not live up to users' expectations. The company announced several Ultimate Extras in January 2007, but only a fraction of these were released five months later. After months without an official update since January, Microsoft released an apology for the delays, stating that it intended to ship the remaining features before the end of summer of 2007. The delays between consecutive updates and months of silence had led to speculation that the development team within the company responsible for the features had been quietly disbanded. When Microsoft announced its intentions to release the remaining Ultimate Extras and released an apology for delays, Paul Thurrott stated that the company had "dropped the ball" with the features. Ed Bott wrote that Ultimate Extras were "probably the biggest mistake Microsoft made with Vista," and that the company would downplay the Ultimate edition of Windows 7 as a result. Bott would later list them among his "decade's worth of Windows mistakes." Microsoft was also criticized for changing the description for Ultimate Extras within the operating system. The offerings slated to be made available were initially described as "cutting-edge programs," "innovative services," and "unique publications," but the description for the features within the Control Panel applet was later modified in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to be more modest; this was interpreted as an attempt made by the company to avoid fulfilling prior expectations. Emil Protalinski of ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' wrote that the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista "would have looked just fine without the joke that is 'Ultimate Extras'" and that the features were supposed to provide an incentive for consumers to purchase that edition, "not give critics something to point and laugh at." In the second part of his review of Windows 7, Peter Bright of ''Ars Technica'' wrote that "the value proposition of the Ultimate Extras was nothing short of piss-poor." Bright would later criticize Microsoft's decision not to release Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Vista, but would go on to state that this was still "not as bad as the Ultimate Extras farce."

References

{{Microsoft Windows components Discontinued Windows components Ultimate Extras

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