Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Posted by Alexander Solis 02/21/08
Microsoft has recently finalized Windows Vista
Service Pack 1 and the update has been released to manufacturing
corporations to be preinstalled on new PC's. The New PCs
with Vista SP1 will appear on store shelves in the coming months
and the manufacturers have reportedly received Vista SP1 on
February 4th. For those wishing to upgrade an existing
Windows Vista PC to service pack 1 users will be able to do so
in mid-March or mid-April of 2008.
Note: There is a known hardware configuration
that gives a small number of device driver errors that came up
late in SP1's development. These systems will be receiving
the service pack in mid-April.
Features Included
in Vista SP1
Device and Application Compatibility
The number of devices that are certified by Microsoft to
work properly with Vista has been increased dramatically.
From an estimated certified 2000 at Vista's initial launch to
over 17,000 known devices today. It is also estimated that
there are just under 80,000 compatible devices not certified by
Microsoft that will work with Vista SP1. There are also a
number of consumer oriented applications that are now compatible
with Vista but the major step that SP1 takes is that it has
fixed a number of incompatible enterprise applications. In
the past year, Microsoft has remediated over 150 enterprise
application blockers. Reliability
When Microsoft tested and analyzed its system they found
that there were fewer non-responding applications, application
freezes and crashes, and fewer system crashes when comparing SP1
to the initial release of Vista. It was reported that the
Initial release of Vista averaged 17 hours before any system
disruptions and that SP1 averages about 34 hours before any
errors occur. Security
Security is one of the most discussed aspects of Vista, from
users complaining about how nagging the User Account Control
(UAC) is to how much Vista has improved its firewall when
compared to its predecessor XP. Microsoft Director Chris
Flores had this to say about Windows Vista Security.
"Users are far less likely to be infected with malware or
spyware on Vista," and "We're really happy how Vista stacks up,
security-wise." File Copy Improvements
Probably the biggest complaint users had about Windows Vista
was the atrocious amount of time it took to copy files either
locally on a single PC or across networks. Microsoft has
located and fixed the problems and has provided the fixes to
these issues in Service Pack 1. Microsoft has also
resolved issues in speed at which Vista resumes from Sleep Mode
and Hibernation Mode that will be fixed in the release of SP1.
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