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I'm a little annoyed about that. It says you can "run .DREAM animated wallpapers (there are hundreds of them)", but then you actually can't. It sucks because I downloaded quite a few dreams, then went to try them and couldn't use them... waste of a few hundred MB of my cap.

Clearly you haven't looked at the program then.

That's right because Ultimate doesn't come with anything else other than the Extras.

However, one of the big features over the other editions was the Ultimate Extras program. Microsoft has failed to deliver and I know I certainly feel let down - it's absolutely ridiculous that a company of Microsoft's size cannot handle releasing a few basic extras in a timely manner.

No the extras wasn't a big feature, they where what's the word... oh yeah.. "extras" :p

Wait.. I thought you can get a poker game? That's worth hundreds of dollars for sure!

YES! This is EXACLTY it! I'm no MS lover OR hater, if they have stuff I like.. I will buy my software from them. It's very scrutinise shopping. The only computer I've built with Vista, is my friends quad core with an 8800 GTS. It hauls ass. Vista Ultimate 64 bit runs great for the most part. He loves it.

Then he asks me, "When are the some more extras going to be released?" I didn't know what in the hell to tell him. "Sorry dude, Microsoft is lazy. It's gonna be a while."

Let's all start a class action lawsuit against MS for lying about the extras. I'm dead serious. If asking and begging does not help get something you PAID FOR... maybe a kick in the wallet will.

Well there are the language packs I couldn't download them fast enough The only thing I use in ultimate that differentiates it from premium is remote desktop

The extras was the bonus, the big thing was the merge of two Windows editions.

Volume Shadow Copy is a rather nice feature to have for accidentally saving on top of files.

I'm pretty sure they never specified how many Extras they would release and when so in their oppinion (and honestly mine too) you did get what you paid for. I don't see why people placed such high value in Ultimate Extras...I'd never like to take vague promises of updates too seriously. You got some but seriously, had they released 100 there would still be people complaining as everyone had different beliefs what the whole scheme was about.

It was a LIE! Ever heard of Bait-and-hook? Microsoft SAID they were going to be releasing extras. They have not thus far. It's just silly they're not doing anything at all.

There's always Windows 7, and if not that, then Win 8, etc., etc.

Multiplicity
TweakVista

There's more if you need them.

No joke. I like XP. I will buy Vista when I can buy the DVD with SP1 in there.

Maybe you dont like bloat but your 15 year old daughter/sister or your wife might.

Just because you dont want it, doesnt mean there isnt people out there that do. You are not special nor perfect.

15 year old wife ! </bad joke>

What's a regular PC? I have two dual cores and one single core PC (desktops). So a "regular" PC is a dual core with a gig or more of RAM. Got it.

Agreed, when I use Windows, I have at least one window in maximized mode. It can be a file manager, but usually it's a browser window. I never look at my desktop icons with small windows on it. I have my "desktop" in a more or less organized folder instead. So this would be completely useless for me, as it would just consume resources for something I don't even see.

They just have a "don't care" attitude as far as I've experienced. I purchased an Object Desktop a few years ago. New versios of almost everything were scheduled about when the subscription was about to run out, so I e-mailed them asking if there was a renewal discount. The reply I got was basically a dismissive, "Nope. You'll have to purchase it again." I didn't. (And I'm 38, way outside of the demographic you suggested...)

Object Desktop renews at a fraction of the original price. Always has. $34.95.

Also, are you suggesting that Stardock scheduled updates around your particular subscription?

I'll look for the e-mail, but I can assure you that it said, "no."

And I'm not suggesting anything. Nothing in OD seemed complete and I didn't feel comfortable renewing for full price not knowing what the updates would bring.

i guess the important thing about the trial version is to see if your computer can run it at a good speed... its better than like, having no trial and then finding out that your computer cant run it, or having the gpu dream feature turned off in the trial so you dont really know how fast it actually runs

If the trial of Windows FX was fully usable, I would've discovered how buggy it was with some of the effects and thus never purchased it. You can't fully test something if over half of it is disabled.

I seriously doubt people are buying Vista Ultimate for dream scene and if they are they need to get their head examined.

we reserve the right to huckster anyone we want.

You said it. If Apple farts in the woods it's on the front page. If Skype releases some new widget it's on the front page. If Google updates a web app it's on the front page. But god forbid if Stardock makes something that's pretty significant it's the end of the world for some folks.

Gee, when Microsoft releases DreamScene for just Ultimate users it was front page news on every site. Stardock releases something that does even more for all users and suddenly it's crap or it isn't news worthy. Puhlease. The double standard is sickening.

Where are the moderators to clean up some of the off topic trolling anyway?

I don't think many people care its on the frong page. Majority of comments are about the software itself. Stop getting off topic. Besides, when MS released dreamscene, we all slagged it off. Why cant we slag off a stardock product? Now thats double standards.

I think that there are two factors at play here. One is, many people here have a hard-on for Stardock for some reason. And I see posts in here that cross the line into personal attacks. Lots of them (though many have been removed). Secondly, there is a bit of over-sensitivity on this topic. I, myself, was cautioned about trolling the news when making a basic non-attacking observation. I'm not even a Windows/Stardock user, so I really don't care about it much one way or the other, yet the staff member (not identified) thought I was trolling.

So it is more the emotion surrounding a topic that many members are overly-sensitive to, combined with what you observe from the moderation end. Though I must give special credit to the staff on this go-around, as there are still plenty of criticial/questioning comments here that are being left open for discussion.

It's a tough balancing act they have to perform (trust me, I have been there when volunteering as a mod here), so also give them credit where it is due.

[quote=GEIST said,#24]I might consider (re)installing it with my OD subscription if there'd be any decent "dreams". I tried it not too long ago. Most of them look like complete crap that make the desktop unusable.

I don't think you have looked hard enough.

There doesn't seem to be a lack of..ahem..criticism about this app either.

What point? ObjectDock is free too. What is mentioned in this post is free too. If you think WindowBlinds = uxtheme free patch I'm sure there are people who think Gimp is just as good as Photoshop too.

Their products eats resources!!!! You obviously have NOT tried their products. If you are going to say things like that show me some evidence as my machine and thousands of others show they use negligible resources. And as for the UXTheme patch you are not comparing like with like. Windowblinds does so much more than the UXTP. And if you add in the other components of Object Desktop you have a customisation experience that is second to none. Now show us all the evidence of your so called 'eat resources' tag. Lets see you put up a task manager showing how Windowblinds, Iconpackager, Cursor XP etc etc using loads of resources. Come on, we're waiting. No, I thought not.

Good grief. Some of you have such a hard on about Stardock that it defies all rationality. The top developer of freeware customization applications is just so greedy I guess. Justin, you're a good guy, I've seen your posts elsewhere. But I can't see for the life of me how you can reasonably argue that Stardock is some sort of money grubbing greedy company (any more than any other company anyway).

Anyway, DeskScapes preview contains 3 animated wallpapers. One is video based, one is dynamic that uses Shader 1.0 and the last is dynamic with polgyons. It's a good way to preview what the technology does and to see how compatible it is on a very wide range of machines. Hence, it's a preview. There isn't even a stand alone DeskScapes to buy.

How exactly is it "bloated"?

for some reason it slows sucks up both my graphics card usage and cpu usage...weird...cpu jumps from ~2% usage to around ~40-50% when running...and visual performance degrades like hell but i suppose that's to be expected...

I dunno, something subtle, like an animated wallpaper of a river gently moving might be nice. Kind of relaxing.
Although I don't even have a normal wallpaper, I just have a solid colour set.
I'm mostly looking at something maximized or nearly maximized anyway.