Windows Ultimate Extras

Windows Ultimate Extras are optional features offered by Microsoft to users of the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista and are accessible via Windows Update. Ultimate Extras replaced the market role of Microsoft Plus!, a product sold for prior consumer releases of Microsoft Windows. According to Microsoft's Barry Goffe, the company's goal with Ultimate Extras was to delight customers who purchased the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista, the most expensive retail edition of the operating system.

Windows Ultimate Extras have been discontinued as of Windows 7 and the operating system also removes all installed extras during an upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate.

Microsoft released a total of nine Ultimate Extras for users of Windows Vista Ultimate.

The BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool utility and the Secure Online Key Backup utility were among the first Ultimate Extras to be made available, and were released to coincide with the general retail availability of Windows Vista. BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool prepares the hard drive to be encrypted with BitLocker, whereas Secure Online Key Backup enabled users to create an off-site backup of their BitLocker recovery password and Encrypting File System recovery certificates at Digital Locker, as part of the Windows Marketplace digital distribution platform. Secure Online Key Backup was rendered inoperable after Digital Locker shut down on August 2009.

Unlike previous versions of Windows, Windows Vista is language-independent; the language architecture separates the language resources for the user interface from the binary code of the operating system. Support for installing additional languages is included in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista. In the Ultimate edition, the functionality is made available through Windows Update as Ultimate Extras.

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