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Ok Mr. Sarcastic Rolly-Eyes - maybe your time isn't that important. For some people however, an update that means WU will be less disruptive to their computer usage is an update that's worth having.

20% is a healthy increase, have you never bought a graphics card, cpu or other hardware item for a 20% or less speed increase? (and this update will be free!)

Any free update the boosts performance/speed/stability etc are welcomed. Keep them coming MS.

Was that your comment? Copying then bolding part of the article? Or is your whole contribution that little emoticon?

Wow, thanks for the fantastic input on this story!

In other news, it appears that a vast majority of people appreciate the improvement in performance of a complimentary service Microsoft has provided it's customers for 10 years.

epic fail for thinking the team that updates windows update has anything to do with ultimate extras

I would rather have microsoft put that time into the next version of windows. There is not a single thing that microsoft can add to vista ultimate that would impress me

They do something wrong, they get slammed. Something right? Slammed again. Maybe everyone should just go stick their head in a bucket of water and leave it there...

I couldn't care less what you think - Ultimate Extras were a PROMISED feature of Vista Ultimate. The update screen actually tells you to check back regularly, yet all they've released is a handful of virtually useless items (sound schemes, languages, etc).


How do you know they don't? They're both delivered through the same service, so it's entirely possible they are linked.

So are Office Updates, Exchange Server Updates and SQL Server Updates.... I suppose it's "entirely possible" those are all made by the same team too.

don't forget visual studio, .net, silverlight, wmp along with NVidia drivers

But seriously...they delivered the Ultimate Extras they promised and beyond that no promise was made as to how many they would deliver. Hell, lets play along and imagine the same guys developing Windows Update also do Ultimate Extras. Even if they could be allocated more time to add extras I'd much rather see them spending their time working on the Update Infrastructure given it's a pretty fundamental part of the OS and all.

I'd like to hope no one actually bought Ultimate for the extras and instead saw them as a small bonus on the side.

Delivered all they promised? It said to "check back regularly" for more extras, though they've removed that now. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that updates every 9 months is not "regular", especially when most of that was for language packs (something that should be available to all, not just an "extra". I, like many others, was expecting new items to be released every couple of months - nothing major but most items like Bitlocker, Dreamscene and Texas Hold 'Em. Microsoft misrepresented what Ultimate Extras actually were - they are a huge company and their behaviour on this matter is unacceptable.

The Internet sure got a lot of ignorant people. They never fail to amaze me.

It's interesting that you call other people ignorant yet fail to justify that statement or state to whom you are referring (or which particular statement). Are we supposed to guess? Telepathy isn't my thing.

Just because you personally don't find the items they've released useful doesn't change the reality that they did in fact release said items, so they did actually release Ultimate Extras, just not ones you were expecting.

The issue, perhaps, is in your expectations as opposed to what they actually released. I'm sure some people do find the extras useful.

I don't think they over hyped them at all. They showed off dreamscene and that got people excited, mentioned Bit locker too but they didn't do that big a frenzy about it. I haven't seen a single advertising campaign for instance that focused on those features.

If anyone mirepresented them it was the press and media, not MS. People generated their own ideas of what they would be and hyped the features ALOT more than MS ever did. Hell, they were almost announced at the 11th hour...it wasn't until very late in the development that they were even unveiled. They were never that vital a part of Vista.

And as mentioned they delivered those promised. The "check back for updates" could easily refer to the fact that several of them arrived a few months plus after vista arrived and thus people did have to check back. I'm sorry they didn't meet your expectations, but MS delivered on those that were promised and any lack of further deliveries is more an issue with people thinking they are more than they ever were. I'd like more too but it won't kill me not to get them. In the end of the day MS gives away that much software that I'm not fussed if Ultimate Extras is ignored a bit. They could easily get some apps they currently distribute to everyone and make it an Ultimate Only extra....but who would want that?

They're linked in the same way that EVERYTHING on Microsoft's website is linked. I don't think you realise just how huge Microsoft is, they're the biggest software company in the world, they have hundreds of individual teams that work on different things, even things that actually DO link together in some way but are separated to a degree for a design sake.
Windows Updates have nothing to do with Ultimate Extras, the extras just happen to be delivered through the service, along with just about everything else.

Besides, why are you bitching, anyway? Even if they WERE made by the same team, can you honestly say you'd rather have some unnamed extra that you'll probably never use instead of a PERFORMANCE upgrade?
I know what I'd want.

I'd rather have something that was an advertised feature versus something that wasn't expected. Obviously all improvements are a good thing.


I never said over-hyped but misrepresented. They didn't explain that the items they announced were pretty much all we were going to get and it did say to check back regularly. It was implied, or could be perceived, that there would be a constant flow of releases. If that was always their intention they should have made very clear that that was what people should expect. We're not talking about a small, naive company - we're talking about the largest software company with the dominant market position. It's simply pathetic behaviour.


Exactly. Which is why it's so annoying that they couldn't just chuck together a handful of stuff to appease the masses.

epic fail for thinking they were ever going to do anything with the ultimate extras

Epic fail for not getting the point of the story and trying yet again to use any Microsoft story as an opportunity to bash Vista.

I know you guys all bashed him for some reason, but I'd like to see some more extras too.

Windows Update does indeed work well, as does the automatic checking for drivers - this makes Vista a lot more user friendly than XP.

Windows Update has had "automatic checking for drivers" since it was released back in 1998 with the release of Windows 98 (the quality of those drivers, the breadth of drivers available, and whether or not you chose to install them, are other issues entirely...), so, there is no relative advantage of Vista over XP in that regard.

Assuming you are actually referring to Microsoft Update and not Windows Update (two different sites/services), you might actually want to try Windows Update instead of Microsoft Update - on older slower PCs with less RAM, Windows Update can often be nearly instantaneous with its results, compared to a 5-45 minutes wait with Microsoft Update. You can always switch back to Microsoft Update when you are finished getting the OS patches, to get "other" updates...

It's only slow if you have a select few programs that Microsoft Update works on, and make heavy use of Windows Installer. It seems Office 2003 is by far the worst offender here; Microsoft Update with Office 2007 scans pretty quickly.

I still can't understand why they just don't use the code from Office Update in Microsoft Update. It's stupid-fast on every system, and even works on Office 2000 as well. If you fake the user-agent in Internet Explorer to NT 5.x, Office Update works in Vista too.

Same thing here. It has taken as long 20 minutes just to scan for the updates. That's NOT including the amount of time to download, verify and install. Getting to the point of almost hating to do Microsoft updates!

Heard it was because of of Office 2003, but still........................

I get the same long time with Office 2007. So I just do the updates via office.microsoft.com, much much faster, and leave Windows Update to do the Windows Update

That email was from 2003, and was about the Microsoft download site. They're currently redesigning that site with Silverlight.


This is about Windows Update, and this seems like a fairly routine performance upgrade.

The email contained experience issues both for Windows Update, and Microsoft Downloads at Microsoft.com.

Yes, the email was from 2003, but got a significant amount of attention last week in both the tech media and the general media, as, indeed, many of the issues the issues he brought up, are still valid and extant today, thus making it what is called "contemporary" - and while I agree its most likely just a matter of timing coincidence, its not unreasonable to wonder if indeed there was some impact on the release of timing of the update itself, or the blog info itself.

Really? When was the last time they pre-announced scanning performance improvements "like this" on their "blog"?

I'm sure that happened just a couple months ago, and you'll be providing the specific details of those prior Windows Update performance improvement blog announcements when you get done "shrugging"..