This discussion is about the Ultimate extras. Anyone who bought Ultimate for the extras is/was an idiot in my book. Those who bought Ultimate for the featureas of Home Premium + Business may have made a good choice (based on thier needs).
I actually did buy Vista Ultimate for other reasons, and I'm not disappointed (although I admit that performance enhancements via SP1 are needed). I actually like Vista a lot. I have no problems with it, now that drivers are mainstream.
Marketing them as they did, MS implies that you are getting these things for free in addition to the core feature set. By doing it this way they owe you nothing.
Here, however, I disagree. Perhaps MS didn't outright
lie, but let's call a spade a spade: It was false advertising -- or at least premature enthusiasm for concepts that they didn't deliver.
The signs that "things fell apart" are pretty clear: When Ultimate first shipped, the official Windows Ultimate Extras team web site was up-and-running quickly, with all sorts of exciting dialog and fanfare. But very, very quickly, they stopped writing. And that's the worst part: The failure to communicate. They basically just stuck their heads in the sand.
Contrast that, for example, with how Brad is always quick to respond to criticism even more candidly than applause. Just a few weeks ago, he posted about how Stardock had or had not served the community, and what his plans were for the future.
When a product like Ultimate launches with promises of great things to come (which help entice the user to purchase that version), then they at least owe it to us users to remain accessible and to stay in frequent contact.
There is a saying in surgery about what decides the character of a good surgeon. It's called the Three
As: "Availability... Affability... and lastly, Ability."
We would be more understanding of problems in the last category if they at least made an honest and concerted effort in the first two.
