i dont think the new ultimate extras sound schemes

is a big deal and your not delivering usefull tools and applications, in matter in fact why do we need extra sound schemes that is the same crap as the original, windows vista sound scheme makes windows vista more cheap, face it windows vista is a crappy software even made. BTW windows vista sound scheme is more quiter then windows xp sound schemes  

This situation is bordering on rude, insulting, and one of complete arrogance at this point.

I for one, cannot even HEAR the sounds in my Vista due to continued driver problems (yes, I'm one of THOSE people). I've been scanning these forums for MONTHS waiting to see if basic functionality will be restored only to find out - wait for it - the big news is a new tuned up sound scheme?

Good grief. Why doesn't the whole Vista team just slap us in the face right now? You guy are WASTING resources on things that don't matter at all. Somehow you seem proud of it too. You shouldn't.

Let's solve REAL problems - like those sound drivers we keep hearing about with "more information coming soon". Nothing is "coming soon" from what I see.

A disgraceful showing with little customer-focus is what this has turned into.

@UNbelievable

The driver not create Microsoft.

you checked if your PC is Vista ready  ???

you have upgrade old PC?

you have cheked you PC with upgrade advisor??

@dovella

That's cold comfort for a person who spent a rather large sum of money believing that Microsoft might have done the sensible thing and not release an OS with insufficient driver support only to find that his/her peripherals and hardware are not compatible... even the whole Vista capable debacle is a slap in the face for people who bought a machine that can barely run the OS.

 knowing well windows Vista, and having installed on thousands of PCs with different configurations,

I must necessarily draw negative conclusions from your words .

Pls post me you hardware

I honestly enjoy the new Vista sound schemes, especially the Ultimate Extras Pearl scheme. The sounds are deeper, more vibrant, and rich. I do appreciate the time and consideration that goes into these endeavors. Thanks for giving Vista an appropriate and distinctive voice...

Regards,

Martin

I still feel nothing beats the melody and rich bass and orchestration of the XP sounds. When I first heard them and the background music of the Windows XP Tour, they brought tears to my eyes. They'll remain perennial in history. The whole eXPerience was so much better and enjoyable with XP's sounds. Vista's sounds aren't bad, but XP's are much better.

P.S. Please don't simply turn off comments,

you can moderate them.

It is hard to believe what I just read by Brandon LeBlanc, wanting people to keep things respectful or he will end the blog.  Great a few people tell Microsoft what they have done to Windows is a true disgrace to the company and a slap in the face to the consumer, I don't really understand the extreme levels that Microsoft is going to, to control our lives trying to prevent piracy so they say.  They come up with this stupid original Microsoft check every time you install an upgrade to one of their components, they want you to buy a new OS every time you switch machines, and if you have more than one machine you have to buy multiple OS's.  I Bill Gates and the higher ups in Microsoft may be able to afford $250. multiple times over without problems and feel as though its fine but most of us out here can't so what do you do?  If you install a program you bought more then once Microsoft and their bought and payed for legal system says your right Mr. Gates and a new law is born, to protect a Multi billionaire from us the consumer that made Microsoft.  This is my rant for the day.        

Is this seriously the only future to the "Extras" program? Should we just resign ourselves to the fact that sound schemes and other useless utilities that can be obtained for free all over the Internet are what we paid extra for? Can Microsoft be honest with us for once?

Does Microsoft really feel that people are getting their money out of this program? We are now paying extra for sound schemes and language packs - all of which are delivered late to boot?

In a way, I can see many of the points mentioned above - we all feel ripped off by the "Extras" mystery, problems with Vista still haven't been addressed properly - even when those responses have been promised as "coming soon", and Microsoft seems to be absolutley fine with all of this.

To summarize - the sound schemes are great. They actually do sound pretty good, but don't kid yourselves - This Extras issue is still a compete debacle on Microsoft's part.

mysterydude2020 & Ceintech,

With all due respect, I believe you’re missing the bigger picture here. If a person bought Vista Ultimate for the "Extras" then you bought Vista Ultimate for the wrong reasons. It would be akin to buying an industrial-sized lawn mower when your lawn resembles a postage stamp, and your reasoning behind doing so was for the 100 dollar mail in rebate. The Vista Ultimate experience was advertised by Microsoft since day one as a comprehensive package, i.e. gaming/entertainment, mobility, security, etc. (the list is quite extensive), not to mention its 64-bit support.

If a person were looking for a "free" operating system to utilize on multiple computers, then maybe he or she should consider Ubuntu or other Linux or Linux based solutions, which are absolute viable alternatives. I support the Ubuntu community with a much passion as I do the Microsoft community, so don’t believe for a second that I am a Microsoft zealot…

Listen, the bottom-line is that Mr. LeBlanc is absolutely correct in his analysis and explanation of the processes that Microsoft engineers and contributors go through in providing a product as seemingly simple as a sound pack. It isn't simply thrown out to the public, but goes through a gauntlet of RD that, believe it or not, costs money. Regardless of your opinions to the contrary, Microsoft has put out a superior operating system, which is the inevitable vehicle to Windows 7 in the same way XP was superior and an inevitable segway from Windows 2000/ME.

I have seen some really ugly comments on this site and none of them are constructive or favorable to a better product, which is what we ALL want regardless if it's from Microsoft, Linux, or Apple. Regardless, I have seen people @ Microsoft, such as Mr. LeBlanc, Mr. Flores and Mr. White, go to extreme measures under the ugliest of circumstances to help people who I thought simply needed to be banned. I suppose all I am saying is let’s help them (Microsoft and others) by doing our part and being constructive in our praises and criticisms alike.

I do feel that a lot of these ugliness is coming from frustration of what is perceived to be an inferior OS.

Vista has had issues with compatibility and performance, sometimes to the point of being unusable and only after much patching and updating, Vista is now shaping up as a viable option (although I still find myself installing XP back on since Vista's gaming performance is pretty woeful even with a 9800gtx and a 3Ghz core duo).

However, XP still is, for most, a far better and sensible option as the "benefits" of Vista Ultimate are simply not apparent. Considering the price payed for a copy of Vista Ultimate edition and the so far rather lackluster extras, some people are feeling ripped off.

Hi all,

I am a user of Windows Vista Ultimate and I like the idea behind Ultimate Extra's. However the Ultimate extra's seem to be lacking at the moment. Maybe we need something like windows xp powertoys (or something along those lines) like virtual desktops for example. Anyhow Vista is great in general. BRING ON WINDOWS 7 AND KICK MAC OF THE SCENE!!!!!

Brandon

I think we all realize that this post is not about Extras in general but about the sound schemes.  However, where else would you like people to express their frustrations over the lack of useful extras?  This is one of the first posts in a long time that are even remotely related to Vista Extras.  We have been promised multiple times news on extras that have never been fulfilled.  So, put yourself in the shoes of the customer for a second and try and understand the frustration.  I realize for you folks that it is frustrating to create something and have it not get the praise it deserves, but Microsoft has really put  itself in this place by promising what it cannot deliver.

I can appreciate all the work behind Vista, however; as a consumer I am frustrated by MS's deployment of an OS which is so unstable so as to make it vitually unusable.  I am using SP1 and it is worthless...constantly fails to run MS's own programs.  Didn't anyone at MS think about their reputation in deploying an OS that never has been stable?  I venture to say it couldn't have ever worked even on the test bench as a stable operating platform.  

When is MS going to step up and fix the 100's of problems?  This is seriously making me go to MAC from now on.  I just can't justify using anymore MS products until they follow through on their customer's justified complaints.  If I bought a car which ran this bad it would be covered under the Lemon law, maybe we need congress to pass such a law to force MS to step up and operate on a professional level.  I am out the cost of the OS and no hope of ever seeing this get fixed as everyone seems to be working on periferals and not the base code.

Widows vista are the new generation windows. It is having many sophisticated characteristics than today's computer. Many new technologies are embedded in vista. It is hardly to get worked with vista. Anyone knows more about it, please let me know.

=======================================

Rakhi

<a href=" http://www.addictionrecovery.net/ohio>Addiction Recovery Ohio </a>  

I just wanted to give a well-deserved praise to an effort that has created a touch of quality and attention that is subtle yet exquisite. I completely appreciate the insight into how the new sound schemes came to be and found the process extremely interesting. I thought the sounds were superbly chosen when I listened to them to begin with, but seeing the depth of attention that went into creating something that is functionally absent yet esthetically polished showcased an attention to detail that gives me as a consumer refined hope into the future of the Windows platform as a whole.

It shows me that at least SOME people at Microsoft are finally getting what a good user experience is all about, and are moreover willing to put resources and time into pursuing that direction. Not everything in life is about an optimization of functionality and in fact most things are very far from it. It is this very attention to detail that separates a BWM from a Suzuki, or an Apple from an anything-else. I am very glad to see this level of understanding being exerted within Microsoft and the teams involved have my commendment to continue to pursue and push for this level of detail in other areas of the OS. Quite frankly, this sound scheme story should be an example and inspiration to all of the MS teams internally and I encourage you to get the vision across to those who have the ability to share it in other places of the company as well.

Thanks for putting a very crafted touch to advancing the intangible quality of Vista's interface. For those of us who appreciate it, we appreciated it well.

As for the Ultimate Extras program, bring on the power-toys suggestion that was mentioned earlier with amazingly-useful things such as virtual desktops, mouse gestures, saving & restoring the desktop state across shutdowns, integrated file-diffing, etc. Windows badly needs to bring such basic advancements to the general consumer's toolset in order to support & promote the ad-hoc multi-tasking and task-centric workflow that allows us to extend our uses of computers as modern users. I can't even work on a non-virtual desktop machine. Or shall we say, I can't work on more than two/three long-running tasks at once? My advance thanks for passing these messages on to the right people involved.

Windows and It's Sounds!!!

It's annoying to put up with a log on sound, shut down sound, boot sound, not too mention their aero design that slows down so many computers it's not funny. My Apple Imac runs awesome and makes one short sound starting up-not a song like windows. The only logon sound i liked was in windows 2000 (my favorite windows operating system). I gave away my vista laptop because i cant buy XP to put it on anymore.- short and simple, Windows is inferior to a Mac and windows steals so many apple designs it's not even funny. Like Apple's Front Row was ripped off with Media Center which personally sucks. My advice-Get a Mac- you'll never have to change your hardware for like five years

Evan, it's not that you won't need to change the hardware, you'll probably have no choice with Apple's limited cookie cutter options.

Some of us do more than just browse the internet and Apple's limited choice of hardware with pathetic GPUs and stupidly limited upgrade path do not cut it with a lot of people in the real world. You'll be better off with Linux if you don't want Windows.

I am not sure I am in the right blog.  I have a question about Volume Mixer.  I recently installed Sprint's Smart Card Novatel for wireless access on my computer.  Ever since then I have been unable to hear the audio on any other media program -- including Windows Media Player.  I look in sound and devices and everything appears to be active -- nothing is muted, and yet I cannot hear anything through my headphones or speakers on the computer.  When I look at the volume mixer it has an Sprint Mobile Broadband Connection Manager as one of the applications.  Do you have any ideas?  Do I just need to get rid of this product and uninstall everything associated with it?  I would really like to be able to use wireless, but more importantly I need audio, as I use this for my work and I am losing money fast.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated