GeekSpeaker

Paying Microsoft for services "to be delivered" is probably never a good idea, it’s probably what made Vista a product that took so long to deliver, and is probably why Ultimate Extras are taking so long if they even ever materialize. I think that all people should receive Vista at a much cheaper discount, and for every major issue that gets fixed in the OS, more money is transferred into their bank account. This would create a bug free Microsoft based on what I’ve seen in the past with software assurance, and now Ultimate Extras.

Not only have we received basically nothing that was a surprise as an added bonus, which could be implied by the price we paid for extra, or two copies of Ultimate in my case, but we haven’t even received nearly any of the features promised on time. Long Zheng says it best:

Ironically a whole lot of nothing is exactly what you’re getting.

When it comes to technology, especially gadgets, and software, many technologists simply must have the best. Microsoft marketing team knows this, and so they used some actuaries to show that the profit margin normally found in Windows and even Office would be dramatically increased by simply creating a small team of engineers that would create a few doodads, that could be really hyped up, but deliver absolutely next to zero value, and they could put in as much value into these copies of windows as they wanted, and deliver it whenever they wanted.

Have you ever felt that it was wrong for a contractor to ask for 100 percent down, for work to be delivered at a later date? I know I have, and I have refused. In the world of technology things are the same and different.

Anyone who must be truly informed about Vista all had to get Ultimate because they would be clueless about the experience and they would have to experience secondhand through the voice and thoughts of others. By getting Ultimate, you get all of Windows, as each other copy is just a subset of Ultimate. I know I wouldn’t be able to blog with as much confidence about Vista unless I had Ultimate. I trusted Microsoft so much that I purchased two copies of Ultimate.

What Microsoft marketing may not know is with each copy of Ultimate they sold a little bit of their trust to us. Not all of their trust, but maybe enough trust that the true hard working innocent engineers at Microsoft whom are burning the midnight oil and had nothing to do with this get tired of their masterpieces being treated as ho-hum, and leave the company to deliver similar products to rave reviews.

At big companies at Microsoft, it’s very hard to understand what happened. Perhaps the Ultimate engineering team was planning on receiving more head count, and perhaps marketing thought so too, but why is it in Microsoft’s interest to pour resources into software that has already been sold and will not increase the next quarters numbers. This is a lesson we all believed Microsoft had already learned with Software Assurance.

I like to think that Microsoft sold a little bit of trust in each copy of Vista Ultimate as well as each software assurance copy. What’s the Ultimate extra we’ve learned with Microsoft? Never pay up front, for services to be delivered later on, because there is a conflict of interest when company management is being offered a paycheck that reflects the next quarters outcome. It’s a shame that a higher-up like Bill Gates or Ray doesn’t step in and make it right, it’s their brand name though, and it leaves you feeling that if this is the Ultimate thing Microsoft can do, perhaps none of their other products are even worth trying.

…and I really mean it.