Windows 7 Ultimate will ship without Ultimate Extras.  MS has pulled them from the product offering, and from Windows Entirely.

The software giant’s approach will be to build to the feature list.  They just don’t have the capacity to continue to deliver features that don’t fall within their regular release cycle.  I get it… I’m all about Change and Release Management.  Anyway, as a result, they are dropping the little goo-jams from Windows.

While MS will deliver Windows 7 Ultimate as one of the six SKU’s it plans to release between now and sometime in 2010, again, the “extras,” what ever they were (like Windows DreamScene, for example) won’t be included.

Originally, Ultimate Extras were supposed to be some of the goodies you got for shelling out the extra shekels for the top of the line version of Vista.  Unfortunately, MS never really stuck to the planned and very public release schedule for Ultimate Extras and the feature set came under a lot of fire. 

MS tried to drop back 10, regroup, punt, and refocus their efforts on them, to no avail.  The add-ons just don’t seem to be in the cards. The last time that Microsoft offered new Extras to Vista Ultimate users was in September 2008, when it released a puzzle game, Windows Tinker; a sound effects package to go with the game; and a trio of DreamScene video screensavers.

I have Vista Ultimate, and I’ve used DreamScene.  Its a cool little add-on, but it eats some processing cycles and a bit of RAM.  I’ve also had Windows crash a few times on my MBP due to WDS.  The only way to get it back was to reboot, and anyone with ANY Windows experience knows that just a pain in the but and a waste of time.  When I had to recently rebuild the Vista side of my MBP, I did it without using WDS.

Did/do you use any of the Vista Ultimate Extras?  I’d love to hear from everyone to see if they find the add-ons worth the extra cost of Vista Ultimate or if they are just a waste of time, and computing power.  Why don’t you join us in the discussion and tell us what you think?