The warm-up: “When you want to have it all, including the ability to shift smoothly between the worlds of play and productivity, there’s Windows Vista Ultimate.”

The sales pitch: “Exclusive to Windows Vista Ultimate are Windows Ultimate Extras. Windows Ultimate Extras are add-ons that extend certain capabilities of your operating system or just make using your PC more fun. Windows Ultimate Extras currently available include”

And final sale: Over one year after release, the Vista team produced the following ‘Ultimate’ extras: DreamScene, Windows Hold ‘Em, Language pakcs for a Multi-lingual UI, Online Key Backup and BitLocker.

Awesome, I can have animated backgrounds, a new card game for when I’m bored of solitaire and other stuff I won’t use. Don’t I feel privelaged cheated to be an Ultimate user. What beguiles me is how can a team of professionals have their head so far up their collective asses as to create such a gaffe.

The Vista team didn’t go wrong in October, when they announced on the 23rd that they had finished pushing out the initial extras and failed to announce or let a detail or two slip of what was in the works.

They went wrong when they conceived the Vista Ultimate extras as an ever-evolving platform requiring continuous development and deployment of programs and other knick-knacks. Essentially, what is has become now, where users wait until their patience wears thin, poke the windows vista blog to see if any updates came up, see none and then go about their day wondering why they spent so much money on unfulfilled promises.

Where could they have gotten the Extras right? Well, for one, realize that the Ultimate platform should not be one of program distribution, but one of encapsulating distribution–where program co-exist with additional options, such as exclusive betas, game access and even Microsoft offers.

Which means, this: instead of rolling out Service Pack 1 in the fashion they did - giving Enterprise customers sole access until Update deployment in mid-March/April - they could have given Ultimate users access to this when it hit on Feb. 4. By and large, Ultimate users are power users, give them the chance to stir up some encouraging words on forums, blogs and whatnot about how much SP1 improves performance.

What else can you give the Ultimate users to give them something to toot their horns about?

The team was getting close with this offer, but it shouldn’t have been limited to additional copies of Vista. Instead, give Ultimate users a good discount on additional softwares, such as the Office suite. Give them additional discounts of Microsoft games, too. Limit it to PC-based games if you want, but I’m sure they could stir up some nice feelings if they spread Ultimate discounts to Xbox 360 software as well. Hell, they could even offload excess useless inventory onto Ultimate customers!

At this point, with how lambasted the service is, a complimentary year-long Games for Windows - LIVE gold service could come tied with Vista Ultimate.

It’s a shame that, as a Vista Ultimate user who was excited by the thought of an updated stream of exclusive extras, I feel like I’ve been terribly cheated.