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Vista SP1 Release May Be Near
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jan 27, 2008 07:56 AM
from the not-before-time dept.
from the not-before-time dept.
Tokonamu sends a note about the release to a private testing group of a new build of Windows Vista SP1, possibly presaging the imminent release of the long-awaited service pack. Speculation about a Feb. 15 release date has been fueled by a report out of Taiwan, according to the article. Microsoft also issued a new build of Windows XP SP3 this week, but it's getting next to no publicity out of Redmond, what with XP being the main competition for Vista and all.
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Submission: Microsoft picks up Vista SP1 pace by Anonymous Coward
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Vista Service Pack One Almost Here 286 comments
arogier writes "After numerous delays and an actual release reversal, the official release date for Vista service pack one has been set for Tuesday, March 18th on Windows Update and Microsoft Downloads. It will be released as an automatic update on April 18th. 'It's unclear so far how a February snafu will affect SP1's roll-out. Last month, after Microsoft pushed a pair of prerequisite patches to users, some reported that their machines refused to finish installing one of the fixes, then went into an endless series of reboots. Several days later, Microsoft pulled the update from automatic delivery, said it was working on a solution and promised it would "make the update available again shortly after we address the issue."' It would be a good time for those planning to adopt early to perform requisite backups and locate their restore media."
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3 reboots (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is MS will push out the pre-requisite updates for SP1 this coming February Patch Tuesday, and SP1 a week or two later.
Re:3 reboots (Score:4, Insightful)
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I thought I already had this... (Score:5, Funny)
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Have you been playing with this at all? (Score:3, Informative)
Vista is dog-fucking-slow on my C2D Conroe 2.66GHz machine w/ 2GB of RAM, 7200RPM SATA HDD and a GF7950 compared to Ubuntu.
Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots? (Score:4, Interesting)
iTunes integrates with QuickTime, which deeply integrates with the graphics subsystem on Mac OS.
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Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots? (Score:4, Informative)
My point is that IE is a part of windows in such that if you removed it, you lose elements of windows explorer, if you remove itunes and quicktime, the OS isn't affected, you don't lose functionality. It's nothing like IE, get a clue please.
It's exactly like IE. If you remove ALL of Quicktime from OSX, you *will* break things.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? What about the technical downsides? Flaws, security holes, performance? Because we all know IE has had hundreds of security issues, and Quicktime has had none, oh, wait... Then again, this is Apple, and Apple can do no wrong.
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I heard a rumor... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I heard a rumor... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I heard a rumor... (Score:5, Funny)
porl
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Well woopdeedoo (Score:2, Insightful)
If Microsoft have waited this long for a full update, then something is seriously screwed in Redmond. Something is even more screwed with the rest of us for finding the service pack upgrade so fascinating.
Geez, try to be fair at least (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a story about the new linux kernel, and that was a point upgrade.
You also get patches/upgrades from MS outside service packs.
So this is in a way like a Linux distro that announces a new point release, which ARE reported on slashdot.
Hate vista or love it. Use it or leave it, but it is a news worthy item when it receives an upgrade. For better or worse this is going to affect a lot of people who read this site.
Oh and OSX has had nothing but point upgrades since it release back in the dark ages, each one of those point releases has been discussed to death.
I don't use vista yet, but am a PC gamer so sooner or later I might have to take the plunge, news on Vista therefor intrests me, if this SP1 is really good, it might hasten the move to Vista and make game companies more inclined to make directx10 only games. Or not, but I want to know when I should start to look into pirating Vista (Pay for MS software? What an odd concept.)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is often worth it. This is because, a point release of linux is a major step forward. They have completely new capabilities for each point release. A major revision would usually be complete re-write.
You say: So this is in a way like a Linux distro that announces a new point release, which ARE reported on slashdot.
Re:Geez, try to be fair at least (Score:4, Insightful)
All the other stories you mention are actual upgrades.
If SP1 brings out new features, then I'll take back what I say. But as far as I can tell so far, it's just going to be a bunch of fixes. Incidently, I never saw why point releases for OS X were so special either - at least in terms of news.
Just my $0.02 - which I should point out is not a troll. Way to go mods of my parent comment.
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Re:Geez, try to be fair at least (Score:5, Insightful)
>news worthy item when it receives an upgrade. For better
>or worse this is going to affect a lot of people who read this site.
You know what the funny/strange part for me was?
When I read the headline here were the first things in order that
came to my mind:
1) It's the first service pack, now folks will be willing to buy it.
2) I wonder if they managed to screw something up/didn't fix it in
their service pack i.e. audio vs. network speed?
3) I wonder if they will force it down people's throats without asking
the vista users?
I don't know if you're a microsoft OS user or not, so you might be blind
to how disturbing the first thought is --- an OS is so crappy you have to
wait for them to clean up their OS before it's safe to go in the water.
There have been some clunkers with the Linux kernel (the last one that I remember
was something like version 2.2 aka the brown paper bag version), but its so rare
(that was 8 years ago folks) that I have no problem upgrading my kernel as soon
it's in Debian testing's repository.
The second point? Well, it *used* to be that a service pack really did fix bugs,
but based on the rc released a few months ago it looks like Vista's sp1 will be nothing
more than cosmetic changes, or rather that's my "impression" now of how
much quality comes out of Redmond.
The third point? In the past couple of years there have been incidents of Microsoft slipping things
to be installed without asking the user that have seemed more like "spyware" than "bugfixes".
The one in particular that I think I'm remembering correctly is windows media player.
I used to be one of those folks who hated, hated, hated Microsoft for being the evil empire.
At some point though I realized that Heinlein's razor applies to Microsoft:
They're not evil. They're just greedy stupid.
One day I realized that Microsoft is just obsolete and irrelevant to my world. I still read
the postings here in slashdot, but really for the +5 funny comments on the next blunder
Microsoft has committed. For entertaining humor, Microsoft is still useful.
--Johnny wishes you best of luck with Vista
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Re:Geez, try to be fair at least (Score:5, Informative)
If you have the chance now to start playing with Vista, now would be the time to do so. Even without SP1, with the latest drivers from ATI and NVidia June/Sept07 & Newer, Vista is clocking framerates above XP on 99% of the systems out there.
The margin of FPS increase with Vista also grows if you LEAVE AERO/GLASS on and are running games inside a Window, or you run more than one game at a time (i.e. two MMO accounts/games).
Remember the brutal reviews of gaming on Vista was in the Jan07/Feb07 timeline when ATI and NVidia admits their drivers still sucked being complete rewrites, and even then on average Vista was only clocking 10-20% behind XP, which was like 5-10FPS in high FPS games. (The poor quality of Video drivers from ATI and NVidia also is the area that POed MS the most, as NVidia and ATI had plenty of time and access to MS resources to ensure the drivers would be top notch, and instead NVidia and ATI went alone in the final development.)
The video subsystem in Vista (despite all the DX10 info) has the potential to run circles around XP and other OSes, as it can not only meet XP draw to screen and render performance, it can suck RAM from the system and virtualize it for GPU operations, and Vista also does pre-emptive scheduling of the GPU, so when multiple games/applications are asking for use of the GPU, the OS manages this without application level yeilding/cooperation. So not only can you run Games in the Aero 3D view (dual 3D apps), but you can also run multiple 3D applications at the same time with minimal frame loss in each application as Vista is multi-tasking them to the GPU smoothly and keeping them from being VRAM starved. Even in a single 3D application/game, the Vista model of multi-scheduling the GPU can improve performance if the game isn't well optimized and shoves the GPU too hard to render crap and starves other parts of the game. Vista tries to step in to ensure that all calls are being processed more equally if it will improve game performance.
As for DirectX10, you will NOT see any great Frame Rates in DX10 games until a game is truly DX10 only. As the DX10 games now that are on the market are DX9 games with DX10 textures and some shadow and lighting added to them, and also try to push up the density of graphics, destroying the FPS gains of DX10.
A solid DX10 dedicated engine with NO DX9 underpinnings has a significant margin of performance gain as well as onscreen quality and consistency between GPU models/vendors. Look at XBox 360 dedicated games that are using the XNA and jumping off from a solid DX10 level engine, they blow cross platform games away in terms of FPS and quality.
The same is true of DX10 in Vista, and having a hybrind DX9/DX10 engine/game makes for a great DX9 game, and can give you some DX10 tastes and visuals, but is nothing like a sole DX10 game. DX10 unlike DX9 doesn't build off the previous versions of DirectX, so where you see 8.1/9.0 DX games that run well in both contexts, this is counterintuitive to building a real DX10 game. Sadly the game companies are looking at the market and the FUD about Vista, and are scared that games will be afraid of a DX10 only game project that requires Vista.
(PS And DX10 does truly require Vista, as the games expect the OS to manage VRAM virtualization, pre-empting the GPU - especially when using the GPU for both physics and visuals, and with the DX10 libraries on XP, these things don't exist, and the game will starve itself expecting the OS/Vista to handle these DX10 aspects. (There are many other aspects like this, but the VRAM virtualization and the pre-emptive GPU scheduler in Vista are the
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Sudden increase in Vista Sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It'd be just like th
XP SP3 (Score:2, Insightful)
Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:5, Interesting)
All those folks (including my own org) are now looking at VistaSP1 vs W7 and wondering about the wisdom of adopting Vista at all. If W7 comes out mid-next year, and there's a W7SP1 about a year later... That means right now that Vista offers barely more than a two-year period of stable operation for an entire platform change. With XP still chugging along merrily (with better stability and lower HW expense/requirements) I really don't see the value for any but the smallest organization.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By 2010, people using XP will have no real choice but to move on, at which point they'll be looking at the then, hopefully, stable, fast reliable Vista vs the new 'bleeding edge' Windows 7 RTM. What do yo
Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:5, Informative)
That is a huge misconception about Vista. The thing that requires the beefy HW is Aero with all it's fancy stuff. Turn it off, and the hardware resources are minimal. I had it running on my Latitude X300 and it ran just fine. The system always felt responsive and peppy. Features to love about Vista include: Firewall profiles, quick standby times (and more important coming out of standby EVERYTIME), great power management, quick search in the start menu (one button hot key to bring up search window (AKA the Windows button)), etc.
Sure it has its quirks but in my experience the good far out weighs the bad.
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Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would love to know how they managed to waste so many MB. Instead of an easter egg flight sim on the level of the one in Excel, did they put in all of MS Flight Simulator X?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No devtools or office tools, beyond a calculator and a crappy
text editor with font support. Or have they included actual
useful software which let you do more than manage your files
and play (some of) your music/movies?
I'm probably getting a laptop soon, and it looks like I'll
have to get a Vista refund no matter what model I pick from
the ones I like. I'll be running XP for a few games and
Ubuntu to get my job done.
Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:4, Informative)
A large part of it is actually backwards-compatibility dlls that will never get called if you use modern software, and are necessary to run certain older software while improving Vista overall (yes, there are some improvements in Vista) -- C:\Windows\assembly + C:\Windows\AppPatch + C:\Windows\inf + some other. Not everything in inf or assembly is necessarily compat, but it comes out to a couple gigs. System32 takes a bit under 3.5 gigabytes, and that's the meat of the OS. Media centre is another half gigabyte (150 MB in ehome, the rest scattered -- much of it is tutorial sample video). Couple hundred megs of log files, I don't know why. 330 MB on
Most of the rest is fairly insignificant, but adds up (stuff like 60 MB of prefetch data is about the upper limit of what I completely ignored, except of course I didn't ignore the prefetch one, did I?).
Notably, a very large proportion of this is backwards compatibility cruft. Do note that if you don't use old software, none of this will be loaded and really won't take up your RAM (if on the other hand you DO use old software, then it will use some tiny portion of this).
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wine is, what, MAYBE 20 MB installed? Granted, it doesn't run every Window program, but it does cover most of the API and run a huge number of them. Let's say it takes ten times that for horribly inefficient MS coders to do the same thing
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter how you spin it, the code that tracks and filters the media streams in Vista, does eat resources. The MP3 playing vs. network performance crap is a consequence.
That said, I am glad you DIDN'T NOTICE any performance degradation with Vista. However, such degradation is real and it is measurable.
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Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you even used vista? Yes there is a whole lot of extra crap in there, same as any microsoft OS release. Remember when XP came out? You are free to turn it off if you don't want it, or don't accept the performance overhead.
Myth: There no "code that tracks and filters the media streams in Vista". That is complete bollox. It was started by some asshat at auckland uni who should have known better. If you had done any research on this you'd know how comprehensively his original paper has been debunked. I'm not going to give you any links, because you probably are in denial and wouldn't check them. If you care, find them yourself.
Fact: The DRM stuff in vista affects capibilities that are new to vista. It doesn't affect anything that was already there in XP. Nothing you already have is crippled. I have been using vista for a year now, and it seriously pissed me off at the start. I turned off a lot of the new vista features, like aero and readyboost. Now I've got used to the changes, I don't mind vista at all, there is some very good new stuff there. And not once have I ever had a problem with any "DRM". Stuff like DVD Decrypter, AnyDVD, BitTorrent, Daemon Tools all work 100%. Truth is I could count on one hand the number of apps that I use that have had compatibility problems. The most serious I can think of is AirSnort.
Seriously, stop spreading this FUD. It does the whole IT community no good. You are an assclown for perpetuating myths like this to non-it people, and you are showing your ignorance by parroting this stuff on a place like
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Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a classic Microsoft strategy: announce a release just around the corner, so customers won't buy a competitors product. Looks like they're doing a good job choking the company who made Vista.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was surprised when Microsoft announced that Windows 7 (successor to Vista) will probably be out in about 16 months.
If Vista was any indication, Microsoft announcing that Windows 7 will be out in 16 months means that delays will push back the Windows 7 release to about 2013, at which point it will have half the initially promised feature set and require at least a 40-core processor to work properly. Meanwhile, the Linux kernel will be at version 2.6.557 and Apple will be making advertisements about people downgrading to Vista and releasing Mac OS X "Serval". Hurd will still be in development.
So what's in it? (Score:2, Informative)
Wait (Score:5, Funny)
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I certainly hope so... (Score:4, Insightful)
For those of you looking to install RC1 be warned it takes about 2 hours to install and you must remove it prior to installing SP1.
Reality check (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot, not at least through posting Twitter-blogs, has informed us thoroughly how deep shit MS is in. Nobody wants their products anymore, everybody and their parents (literally) are switching to Mac or Linux (we can't really agree on which, but that doesn't matter). Vista is such a big P.O.S. and sales failure that we suspect it's not really running on any PC at all, people claiming otherwise being astroturfers. And MS are obviously well down the road to bankruptcy.
But surfing outside our informed group here, websites talk about recent fantastic record results and outlooks for Microsoft, among other things fueled by strong Windows growth. People talk about faster adoption rate and less problems with Vista than XP, over 100 million users, MS being rated as one of the most respected companies, and other shit like that.
Where are these people living, and where do they get there information from. Aren't they reading Slashdot??
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Some people are just optimistic.
Re:Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista is a nightmare for IT people though. From the go, Microsoft was lazy about releasing the management tools as anything but Beta because they want to sell companies Server 2008 for the "full experience".... 18 months AFTER Vista is released??? The number of programs broken for an enterprise is a show stopper bug as well, even including Microsoft programs for the first 6 months or so. There is software my company uses that was "certified" for Vista in December! 2007! a full year after Vista was released for corporate use. Microsoft went straight to the consumers with this release, and screwed over corporate users.
It's not been a PROFESSIONAL roll-out... and the people that read/post to Slashdot are the one that have to make the MS stuff ACTUALLY WORK. We're the ones that have to explain to the bosses with their new shiny Vista Ultimate notebooks their new machine can't run half the companies most important software... the stuff they use to get their precious numbers from. Most Slashdotters have a special hatred of Microsoft because while supporting it's software pays our bills, it's not Professional work... it's grunt work times 10 making up for things Windows should have done right the first time!
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Vista SP 1 is a brilliant name for (Score:3, Funny)
They can also call it Hasta La Vista to avoid lawsuits.
Tech release or marketing release? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, will this be a "real" service pack, or is it aimed at all the companies that said they wouldn't switch to Vista until SP1 came out?
The World IS moving to Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't "upgrade" to Vista, they don't decide to buy a Mac, they sure don't try out Ubuntu, they use Vista because that's what came on their new laptop.
Microsoft doesn't need exponential sales of Vista, they don't need the whole world to change overnight. All that they need is to wait as millions of people eventually upgrade their systems. As long as Dell or Best Buy will sell them a laptop for $599 (compared to Apple, whose offerings start at about $1000) that's what people will buy, and Microsoft can watch the adoption continue apace. Widespread use of Vista is pretty much inevitable.
My PC is still running Windows 2000. Its fine, mostly, except for some apps that actually insist on XP. Still, I have conceded that at some point I will upgrade and have "acquired" a copy of XP from one of the usual sources. I don't need it today, but acknowledge that one day soon I'll take a day or two off and upgrade.
In fact my first experience with Vista was in the last month [community-media.com], helping a girlfriend set up her new HP laptop. Based on the problems that we ran into I'd be wary of encouraging people to buy Vista yet, but I also accepted that if she was buying a system that's what she would get so I was prepared for a steep learning curve. If anything Vista reminds me a lot of OS X - very pretty but very frustrating if you don't want to do exactly what Redmond or Cupertino want you to do.
Re:XP SP3? (Score:5, Funny)
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