Windows Vista SP1 Hands-On Details

babyshiori writes "Users of Microsoft Windows Vista can rejoice in the fact that Microsoft just released a preview of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate! The build is the lead-up to the actual service pack, which will be made available to even more testers at a later date. 'In our early tests with the beta, we saw some small improvements in boot time on an HP Compaq 8710p Core 2 Duo notebook. Before SP1, the laptop took 1 minute, 51 seconds to boot. After the update, that figure dropped by almost 20 seconds. Microsoft is also touting improvements in "the speed of copying and extracting files," so we tested a few of those scenarios. We noted a slight increase in the time required to copy 562 JPEG images totaling 1.9GB from an SD Card to the hard drive of the aforementioned HP Compaq notebook.'"

Times

[SnoopJeDi]

Don't trust the times this article points out too solidly, they certainly don't sound like they were derived using proper statistics. More likely, they probably just booted it up once before installing the SP, timed it, and then booted it up after, and timed it.

Could be wrong, but whatever, let's party, SP1 is near!

Typical OS timeline

[binaryspiral]

This is really nothing new, Windows 9x, 2k, and XP were all turds when they were first released. Driver maturity, application refinements, hardware improvements, and service packs all make the experience more tolerable.

But I'm sick of the status quo and expected a much better OS when Vista was first released. If it took 9 months of driver development and OS improvements - then it shouldn't have been released 9 months early.

Epic Disaster

[aldheorte]

Vista is a not an epic disaster because of:

1. Performance.
2. Security.
3. Anything that early technical adopters care about.

It it is an epic disaster because of:

1. Lack of backward compatibility (software and hardware).
2. Non-technical people being aware of (1).

Therefore, testing whether files copy 2% faster is like exhaustively examining a bolt in a tanker that has run aground and split in half.

Re:40 second boot time an improvement?

[Znork]

Yes, well, one would think so, but it turns out that the ability to extract revenue and spend billions isnt what drives progress or encourages development.

It turns out competition is.

So much for granting monopoly rights to 'promote the progress of science and useful arts'.

Re:40 second boot time an improvement?

[gEvil (beta)]

40 seconds? I wish. Where did you get that number from? The article talks about how the startup time has been cut down from 1:50 to 1:30. Also, I seem to recall Bill Gates talking a few years ago about how they were going to get the startup time to like 30 seconds or so. Now we're "impressed" when it only takes 3 times that...

Windows XP SP3 please

[chowells]

Personally I'd much rather they get around to releasing XP SP3.

Vista isn't on my personal radar, nor of my employers. But installing a fresh XP and having to install 80 odd updates is a PITA.

Re:SP or New OS?

[Pieroxy]

It is not a joke. It is a preview. Not even a beta. Whining on the HDD requirements at that stage seems a bit stupid, really.

Re:Times

[RobertM1968]

Could be wrong, but whatever, let's party, SP1 is near!

Not to sound too much like a troll or anything, but until it is downloadable, I for one will not consider it "near".

SP1 was scheduled for release this past summer (from MS announcements shortly after Vista Consumer release).

SP1 was then delayed to "by the end of the year" (from comments made a month ago)

SP1 (from MS's latest comments which you can find here: http://www.itworld.com/Comp/2218/071115vistaskip/ [itworld.com] ) is now scheduled for release in Q1 2008.

I guess "near" is a subjective thing... but as of right now, it seems they really have no real release strategy... until it is done, I am not betting on "near" or even "sometime soon"

What really interests me is that they are quite well aware of the need to address these issues quickly if they want to see a greater adoption of Vista by businesses and/or home users considering upgrading - yet the release date, for a Service Pack that only addresses some of the issues, keeps slipping.

Yes, I agree it is a good thing that they don't release the SP till it's ready - but it kinda scares me that they need to put in so much time to fix the issues that they are addressing - and scarier still, that in trying to do so, their release date keeps slipping... it kind of makes me think that when they looked at the issues and underlying code, they collectively said "Wow, this is really a mess... we need a LOT more time than we thought if we are gonna fix this" (well, I think doubling the release time is a LOT more time... though considering their recent OS release schedule, they may disagree).

It makes me seriously wonder how severely wrong some of their programming decisions (or "push it out the door, ready-or-not" decision) with Vista really were - and how adequately a Service Pack can really address those issues. (is this gonna be just another band-aid?)

Re:90 seconds considered good?

[dal20402]

... and my Macbook Pro will come out of standby in about 1 second (plus however long the wireless handshake takes). Plus, it's reliable enough that if I put it into standby I *know* it will come out. I basically never reboot or hibernate. No need to futz around and remove functionality just so I can open my laptop and be working more quickly.

Why haven't either Microsoft or the makers of any Linux distro been able to get standby right? Mac notebooks have been like this since OS X came out in 2001.

what is the case for running Vista? I forget

[victorvodka]

I know it's new and it's got some user interface changes, but for the stuff I do with a computer, is there a reason I should be running Vista, or that I shouldn't uninstall Vista from my next computer and upgrade to the light, fast, relatively DRM-free OS known as Windows XP? So far no one has presented a compelling case for using a OS that runs slower and requires twice the memory of XP. It could be I'm missing something really really super important here. Is it that we're just supposed to run whatever is newest? Because by that logic we should vote for whatever presidential candidate is youngest.

Re:Epic Disaster

[JebusIsLord]

They actually tried to fix a perfectly broken API, full of gaping security holes left over from the innocent, pre-internet days of the early 90s. This work started with XP SP2, which you may recall also broke a lot of software.

Re:Service packs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Very clever. I doubt many people will get it, though.

Some content please

[rueger]

Woe be those who criticize Slashdot editorial practice, but was that about the most pathetic "review" that you've ever seen? For those who haven't read TFA, all of the comments here about boot times are because that the only substantive thing mentioned in the article. Really:

Microsoft says, the service pack beta improves stability, performance, and reliability when reactivating a machine from Hibernate or Suspend mode; enhances device-driver support; increases security; and adds support for new standards such as Extended File Allocation Table (intended to enhance flash storage on notebooks, not desktops). ...

... we saw some small improvements in boot time on an HP Compaq 8710p Core 2 Duo notebook. Before SP1, the laptop took 1 minute, 51 seconds to boot. After the update, that figure dropped by almost 20 seconds.

... We noted a slight increase in the time required to copy 562 JPEG images totalling 1.9GB from an SD Card to the hard drive of the aforementioned HP Compaq notebook.

In another test, we used Nero 7 Ultra on an Acer Aspire 5630 Core 2 Duo laptop to add files to a disk image. After we installed SP1, The notebook built the disk image about 7 percent faster.

Yes. That's it. Nothing more. I don't know who to complain about, the article submitter or the Slashdot ed that approved it.

Re:Windows XP SP3 please

[Nimey]

It wouldn't surprise me if IBM still does for their mainframe stuff. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if they still offer support for old System/360s and older AS/400s.

Did you say MUSIC files?

[CPNABEND]

You can throw all of those away - with enhanced DRM in the service pack, you won't be able to play them anyway :^)

Re:40 second boot time an improvement?

[cheater512]

You'd think that with modern technology and multi-billion dollar budgets they could do it properly.

My Pentium 3 laptop will boot from power on to console (including BIOS) in 18 seconds.
Add another 10 for KDE.

You'll never see Vista booting from power on to fully functional system (not slow and laggy with things still loading) in under 30 seconds.

No need for making ram images or that kind of nonsense.
Thats like applying a bandaid to a amputated arm.
It is infact possible to make a computer boot fast without any tricks.

But what can it do that XP can't...?

[Joce640k]

The big question isn't whether or not Vista is acceptably good, it's that it doesn't do a single thing that XP can't. In many cases it does things worse/slower.

So is there a reason to upgrade from XP? I don't see one.

If you hadn't got the Premium version for free would you have paid $400 for it?

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds exactly like my experience. I'm running an E6600 with 2GB of RAM, and Vista still runs like a pile of crap compared to XP. I turned off Aero, I turned off Windows Search. It was still shit. I'm utterly baffled by the people who say that Vista is fast. It's unacceptably slow even with a powerful modern system.

Re:SP or New OS?

[VGPowerlord]

It's not compressing 7GB of data into a 50MB download.

At a guess, it's saving modified files to a temporary directory, then replacing all the existing files near the end. This way, if it runs into an upgrade partway through, it just does a rollback... that is, deletes the new files.

Given that databases and filesystems work this way, this shouldn't be a surprise.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is always broken or flawed in some way, so you actually need to update to the latest version.

Mac OS X and the various Linux distros simply evolve and get better, that doesn't imply that earlier versions were crap.

Re:Main changes coming with SP1

[macdaddy357]

Vista is a mistake on par with ME that no service pack will fix. It never should have seen the light of day. It may be hard to accept that you need to just scrap something you spent countless hours and billions of dollars on, but Microsoft should have.

Re:But what can it do that XP can't...?

[tieTYT]

Not yet, but eventually I'm sure the latest and greatest games will only come out for Vista, the newest Office files can only be read by a version that works on Vista and you will only get security/os upgrades for Vista, etc. They can make an amazing library for .NET that every developer would want to use that will only work for Vista. They can pay tons of companies to make the next version of their application Vista only.

Basically, I don't think MS is going to make people want to switch to Vista by making Vista great, they'll make people switch by making XP inconvenient/unsafe to use.

Vista, wow? No; more like "Unsafe At Any Speed"

[jdickey]

In any industry other than consumer software, Microsoft would have been shut down years ago for negligently exposing consumers to grossly defective products. Vista is the Aqua Beads [iht.com] of software. You wouldn't tolerate this level of nonsense in your automobile, your television, or your kids' breakfast cereal; why tolerate it in a commercial product that has huge economic and public-policy exposure?