Vista SP1 Release May Be Near 231
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.
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.)
XP SP3 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:3 reboots (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Geez, try to be fair at least (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.
Linux and all open source projects, and Macs to a lesser extent, follow a very conservative versioning system. So don't compare service packs that are essentially bug-fixes to major-revisions of linux or macs.
Eg., 10.4 to 10.5 - Mac OS X became 100% 64-bit (with the same binaries working in 32-bit + PPC system (fat binaries), and so on.
7.04 to 7.10 - Ubuntu introduced Compiz as standard (like DirectX 9 to 10), and so on.
Please don't fawn to Microsoft and Windows.
Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (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 you think they're gonna choose?
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.
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.
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??
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
Re:Reality check (Score:3, Insightful)
If the competition is XP... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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!
Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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: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.
Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots? (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.
So if I choose not to use IE I am still vulnerable to IE flaws, because other apps can still invoke IE library calls, etc. Right, gotcha. If I choose not to use QT, I have "none of those problems" because, apparently, through the power of telepathy, any other application that might use QT library calls, from Final Cut Pro to After Effects (I seem to recall AE being borked by changes in QT just last week), knows that I've "chosen not to use QT" and its associated library calls, ergo Microsoft is horrible and evil and represents all that is soulless in the world, whilst Apple's genius never ceases to amaze us.
Do you actually believe what you wrote? Because if you were to re-read it, reversing the words QT and IE, or substituting third party libraries, would you still believe it?
Apparently, according to you, you're vulnerable because IE libraries and hooks are used throughout the system - sure, like the help system, etc. Which is why many MS security patches note that "this flaw can still affect you even if you do not use Internet Explorer", and yet Quicktime flaws, well, you don't need to update and fix them, you just "choose not to use them" and magically every other application and OS call on your system is protected?
The RDF field is strong in this one.