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Vista SP1 Coming In Q1 2008
Many readers sent in word of Microsoft's announcement of the schedule for Vista SP1. The Beskerming blog has a good summary. Up to 15,000 people will get access to a beta of SP1 by the end of September; general release is targeted (not promised in stone) for early 2008. The service pack is said to improve performance and stability, not to add features.
It's pretty clear now that Vista should not have even been released until Q1 of 2008.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dammit, screw Vista, where's my SP3 for Windows XP?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
got a new vaio laptop with vista installed..
vista really chews the memory up, I hope they fix that first off..
with all the problems people are having with upgrades, installs and everything else perhaps they should have waited a little longer.
as with most things microsoft though, the computer comes pre-installed and nobody ever bothers changing anything (take IE for example and the fact that web developers in 2010 will STILL be writing sites to work-around two different browsers..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I'd bet the release of SP1 ends up being good for everyone. People that already have Vista will have (at least some of) their performance issues sorted out. Then, since Vista won't be as broken as it has been, more copies should sell, leading to better development for it. As much as people say they'll never move off of XP, people said that about 98. It's not that nobody upgrades to the new versions of Windows anymore; they're just (rightfully) a bit more cautious about it now.
Maybe SP1 will include support for component video!
... 1GB
*agog*
And you need 7GB of disk space? Are you sure this is just a service pack? Bloat!!
I thought Vista was their stable operating system..
If you look around the web, you'll find that the main two fixes to be included in SP1 are already out, and have been since the beginning of August.
Ars Technica article about the packs
I look forward to this much-needed update being released in November 2011.
Isn't that more than are running Vista right now?
Hmm... Here we go again.....Vista doesn't chew memory upp, for crying out loud! . Vista is USING the memory that is unused. What do you pay for your memory for? To have it unused? If nobody is using it, Vista will just use it damn it!. Don't worry, if some application will need it, Vista's memory manager will give it back.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
since many people said they won't upgrade to Vista till SP2.
I hate this forcing everyone to Vista. It's almost impossible to find a new notebook with preinstalled XP now in Moscow.
I choose friends for sigs
Sammy / better with a MacBook
If the intention is to fix everything that's wrong with Vista, I'm impressed they got it all into only 1 GB.
Unless you are saying you need more ram (which may be true), this is why Vista always has all of the memory utilized
v ista/features/details/superfetch.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windows
SuperFetch
Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP-based PCs.
When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks--including automatic backup programs and antivirus scans--run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take up system memory space that your programs had been using. On Windows XP-based PCs, this can slow progress to a crawl when you attempt to resume work.
SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first.
Service Pack 1 won't exactly make Vista more desirable as an OS; but it is a psychological landmark that says "we worked most of the bugs out and we're finally done with it". Businesses may bite; but I'm not 100% convinced that Vista is better than XP quite yet.
This SP full of patches still probably won't prevent people from deleting their Recycle Bin, end the UAC nazi tyranny and let admins do admin things with computers. Once MS figures-out a way to make Vista useful without all those annoyances and brick walls, then I may give it another look.
I know I'm going to -1 Flamebait hell for this; but if a Windows box has to be insecure in order to be useful, then so be it.
The game.
I was looking forward to SP1 as a way of 'finishing' the obviously unfinished Vista... fixing issues of "old" dialogs mixed with new dialogs, inconsistent graphics, icons, and fonts, updating additional parts of the UI to the new look and feel, incorporation of all the new-look Vista controls into common dialogs and common controls, consistency improvements across the UI, etc.
Instead we get what is basically a "roll-up" of existing patches, along with a few "under the cover" performance and stability improvements. As welcome as those are, it isn't really "enough", imho, and this is a real lost opportunity for MS to drive acceptance of Vista, by actually completing it and polishing the UI and Usability of their flagship OS.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Microsoft doesn't consider performance and stability to be features?
I guess they think that if the software behaves abnormally, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Therefore, when you introduce performance and stability, they aren't features.
That totally makes sense.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
Version 3 is the traditional version to buy with Microsoft products. The first release is a mess, the second one is a guess at improvements (as they typically haven't received good feedback from customers by then), but the third one is typically solid and well-received.
That rule of thumb has worked well with Windows 3.0, Word 3.0, SQL 7 (which was actually the third version after Microsoft bought Sybase), and so on. Service packs are a little trickier. SP2 could be considered the third "release" of an OS. With XP, it wasn't really until SP2 that it seemed secure and stable enough.
I think your excuse was just fine, but off by a digit.
There's nothing like a does of Register reality to make your morning. "Microsoft promises less-annoying Vista OS early next year" gets right to the M$ money line:
Limbo, limbo, how low can you go? After six years of development, you would think Vista would at least work as well as XP. It does not because big dumb media companies were the customer, not you. Most of you have given this "little-used operating system" the thumbs down it deserves. One more year is not going to make a big difference and you have to wonder if M$ will be able to recover such a wrecked code base. They are not going to give up their expensive digital restrictions but those will never work, what can they do?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah right, because the system is using DRM every single millisecond. I hope people just will begin trying to undertand what DRM does and what it doesn't instead for just keeping repeating myths, lies and fud... Yes, Vista has support for DRM operations. But damnit, it's not just like moving the cursor magically invokes some obscure DRM routines.... I would guess that 99,9 % of all the so called performance problems in vista have ABSOLUTLY NOTHING to do with DRM in any shape and form.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
vista really chews the memory up, I hope they fix that first off..
:-p
:-p) USB memory stick and have Vista manage it as extra RAM. It's not really RAM-fast or anything (but it doesn't seem to make things worse at least), but especially seeemed to cut a bit on hard drive access. I'm not sure, but it's possible it relocates some of its swap file to it as ReadyBoost kicks in.
Here's my unofficial mini-service pack for Vista.
1. Type services.msc in the start menu search box and go there.
2. Open and set "Windows Search" to "Inactive" as its start mode and stop the service, unless you use Vista's search facilities and not a third party tool like Total Commander or Directory Opus, etc.
3. Open and disable "Superfetch" in the same way, unless you trust it to actually make things run faster and predict your usage behavior. Keep in mind that it'll keep caching data to RAM in its "prediction" process. Even data files, not just executables and DLL's. This can be especially nasty when it starts caching 100 MB-sized files you have downloaded with P2P apps because it think you'll run them soon, or something.
4. Try putting in a ReadyBoost-compatible (you probably won't know if it is until you've tried
5. If you haven't got these installed (you'll notice if it tells you they can't be installed on your OS), download and install these Vista hotfixes performance and reliability and compatibility and reliability. Among other things included is fixes to the Vista memory manager and many users have reported both cut memory usage directly after boot up, and better 3D benchmark scores. It also fixes the infamous "slow file copy" bug of Vista.
Now try use it for a day or so, and hopefully your hard drive access has been cut. As long as you don't use the Vista desktop search, no disabled services above really impact the ability of Vista to function as normal, and you can always enable them again if you notice no improvement. Something else that access your drive a lot at a few times is the System Restore feature that also runs as a service, but I don't recommend disabling that one since it'll also disable your ability to restore your OS state to an earlier date if, say, an application or driver install would go horribly wrong.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
To which the developers at Skype are yelling "HOPEFULLY NOT ALL AT THE EXACT SAME TIME, ASSHATS!"
SP1 for Vista also comes with an update to the EULA. All you Vista users are going to read it, right?
Right?
It might require you to hand over your first born to Microsoft to get unlocked high-def video to work, so I suggest reading it.
Developers: We can use your help.
An interesting nugget of info for you all, seeing as no-one has mentioned this yet....
The update will bring the Vista kernel to version 6.1. Why is this significant? It's the same kernel version that Windows Server 2008 will be. That means folks, that Microsoft, in effect have used Vista pre-SP1 as a test-bed for their Windows server platform. Servers crashing cause more panic than workstations, and take a guess slashdotters....which market-share are Microsoft champing at the bit for most? I'll give you a clue.....they already own the desktop.
The Vista strategy was "release and fix while in production" and in fairness, 6 months down the line, a lot has been fixed and Vista is shaping up to be a solid platform, but build numbers don't lie.
There, I said it.
throw new NoSignatureException();
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Vista+service+pack+c oming+in+08/2100-1016_3-6204980.html
The thing to note from this article is this quote:
"Vista SP1 will be a large download: Roughly 1GB, based on current test versions. By way of comparison, Windows XP--the whole thing--shipped on a CD, which only holds about three quarters of a gigabyte. Installing the OS upgrade will require 7GB of free hard drive space, though much of that will be returned to the user once the megapatch is applied, Microsoft said."
That conflicts with this statement from TFA:
"DeVaan: It's true that at first glance it will look like a lot is changing, and it's true that there are thousands of files being changed to varying degrees in Windows Vista SP1. However, the first measure of "size" most people will encounter will likely be the download of Windows Vista SP1 through Windows Update or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), which we predict will be about 50 MB. The second measure of size will be the free disk space requirement for installing Windows Vista SP1, which is currently around 7 GB for the beta, although we will be working to bring this down for the final version as we optimize the servicing algorithms used."
So... which is it?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
My eyes started to bleed when i read the 1GB size. OMFG
To Hell with the Queen of England!
Unless they remove the bloatware and redesign the architecture to kill the continual directory update process, I think my old Pentium 800mhz with XP and 500mb of ram will still beat my Emachine 2800mhz with Vista and 1 gig of ram in a boot up to a Character Log on to EverQuest Plain of Knowledge by a good 45 seconds as usual.
The Microsoft should be embarrassed by Vista's performance. Everyone who see this at home laughs...
Seriously, Vista likes lots of RAM. That's just how it is. If that's not acceptable, don't use it. However I don't see it as a big deal because RAM is CHEAP. For a new laptop, using DDR2, you are talking $80 for 2GB which will make Vista plenty happy. If you can afford a brand new laptop, you can't pretend like that's an expense you can't handle.
This happens with basically every version of Windows, the memory requirements double. For Windows XP my memory recommendations were 256/512/1GB meaning if you didn't have at least 256MB, I said don't bother, 512MB was what I recommended as a realistic minimum if you had less than that upgrade, and 1GB was what I recommended for good performance overall. With Vista it's 512/1GB/2GB.
Memory has never been something you wanted to cheapskate on, and that's particularly true now given how cheap it is.
So I doubt they'll be "fixing" it's memory usage. Memory is cheap these days and stuff is using it. Also Vista will always eat up all free RAM with it's caching. Empty RAM is wasted RAM. It'll precache programs you run, and free up the RAM as running applications need it. Right now my system is reporting 28 of 4096 MB free, even though I'm running just Fiefox. However of that, 3017GB is cache and can be freed up at any time. That's a much better idea than leaving RAM open just so people can get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing it as free.
They might be able to optimize RAM usage a bit, but I doubt it. New MS OSes always use more RAM, and people always seem surprised. I could see the complaint a bit back when the RAM makers were colluding and fixing prices, but now when 2GB of RAM costs less than a nice wireless keyboard and mouse, I just don't see what the big deal is. Even if you don't run Vista, you should drop more RAM in your system. Apps are not going to start using less, and the biggest way to kill the performance of a fast system is too little RAM.
So that's when the Wow starts!
That's because of window handles, I get the problem all the time in XP. As soon as all the window handles are used up you can no longer create any new windows, the problem is that closing windows doesn't seem to free them up and the only thing to do is reboot.
I would have thought they would have fixed this obvious problem that causes no end of grief to people where I work ages ago. Looks like I'll have to stick the X Windows.
Now, if only someone in Microsoft would realise that forms in Word have been broken since the year . and actually fix them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
"Vista SP1 Coming In Q1 2008"
Which means it'll really be coming in Q4 2012.
People on /. keep using that word, but I do not think it means what they think it means. Neither Microsoft or any of its resellers are forcing you to adopt Vista. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. If you don't want to buy a PC with Vista installed, then simply don't buy one.
Because the Vista SP1 simply uninstalls Vista and installs XP.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
If this is related to the news that Windows server has been delayed to get more production testing of the kernal?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
It will run format x at startup, where x is a partition containing any Windows OS
For the record, a bootable live cd image of kubuntu fits into a 700mb disk ... :)
Just one more SP 'til the system's ready for release status!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is actually a feature, not a bug (look under the SuperFetch section).
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Notice no mention of Vista SP1 on that page
Therefore, this page is probably being ignored by MS.
IOW: Don't hold your breath for XP SP3
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I will *one day* move off XP. However, I am designing a Last-Of-Breed machine to milk XP until it complely caves.
I will not be moving to Vista. My plan has always been to try skip every couple of OS versions if possible. Thus my machine should last into the Windows 7 discussion.
Meanwhile in parallel, it's an open discussion between Linux & Apple. Bazaar vs. Integration. But SP1 "to fix issues" is classic Microsoft "Let's Sell BetaWare".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Shouldn't it be "to add performance and stability"...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
After six years of development, you would think Vista would at least work as well as XP
After 10 years of development, you'd think XP would work at least as well as 2K.
I tried Windows Vista. My hardware, while not brand spanking new, is quite reasonable - Athlon X2 3800+ (socket 939) - 4 GB RAM - NVidia 6800 series And Asus says my motherboard is Vista Compatible, but my excursion into Vista failed... Miserably. First, a number of my applications did not work, or they started working and then closed. Next, I started experiencing "driver" related crashes (All my drivers are MS approved). Then, I stopped being able to manage files on my computer (copying between two hard drives at 500K/s...) I updated, I patched, I swapped components, I became frustrated, and I installed Ubuntu. For the months I had Vista, I couldn't run most of the applications I *had* to have, so it made the switch MUCH easier. Since installing Ubuntu, my computer has not crashed a single time. Their are only two things that make me miss Windows - Visual Studio 2005 (my work), and Roboform. I can use other IDE's, but they aren't quite as nice as VS2005. I can use other password managers, but they aren't as functional as Roboform. I miss nothing else from windows. For those who miss the eye candy Vista may or may not offer, depending on how much of your soul you are willing to trade, try beryl.
I *just* got a Thinkpad X60 Tablet 1.5Ghz Code Duo, and I sprung for the 10k RPM HD, 2GB RAM, yadda-yadda, and Vista Business.
Woe is me. My graphics score for Aero is a paltry 2.0. SimCity 4.0 playability is pathetic, with the game halting and often freezing.
I have no reason to think there is anything other than Vista to blame.
I haven't even dared to do anything "serious" with the machine for fear of further disappointment.
I rather like my machines staying out of harm's way unless I want to run my own process. I have a classical Dell NetBurst P4 running XP at work. When it's under 20% usage, it stays quiet. When some silly process jumps in, the fan kicks in, and it sounds like an airplane taking off. Then it won't notice the process went away, so the fan keeps going. It's my "Uh Oh" indicator.
I'd have a hard time with Vista randomly running processes... because I don't trust MS's judgement on what needs to be run. It's also harder to guage how heavy an app really is if you can't simply subtract new usage - old usage because the OS is running garbage processes.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The 1GB is for the redistributable version. The actual service pack on Windows Update will be about 50MB.
"Oh boy"
Good plan.
Take your mod and shove it!
God, I miss the days when Micro$oft made app compatibility in Windows a priority... Think back to the amount of testing done for Windows 3.1, 95, 98. Think of Microsoft's attempts at an "application compatibility layer" in 2000 and XP.
I know about the con's, but what are the pro's of Vista?
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
It's called an upgrade to Linux or the MacOS for my laptop, so it will actually work and start up and shut down in under 30 seconds.
You guys lost me on this one. I've owned Microsoft OS since DOS 1.0, have owned DOS 1.1, 2.0, 2.2, 3.0, 3.3, 4.0, 5.0, and so many flavors of Windows since 1.0 that it would take me a long time to list them.
Sorry, count me out.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I've been running Vista (both x32 and x64 editions) for 8 months now. Never had a crash, blue screen, or hiccup the whole time. I guess I must be the only person for whom Vista actually works well. I have no complaints with it, other than I'd like to see the network slowdown issue when playing multimedia addressed.
All my apps work, and Vista has never crashed on me. I use it on 3 different computers and they all run Vista just fine.
I guess I should go buy some lottery tickets since I seem to be exceedingly lucky!
Of course it's "promised in stone"; Microsoft always 'promises' a release date. They just break the stone and say it never existed.
Let me know when they release something on time...
Something that wasn't rushed and ruined...
<sig> </sig>
If you can get one of the beta releases of server 2008, you will find that an enormous number of services have been turned off. Server runs well on minimal HW and makes a nice desktop as long as you don't want any media functionality.
The only reason Microsoft brings out SP1 so 'early' is because too many people say: we'll wait till SP1. They really want you to buy Vista for which sales are way lower than expected, so they push up SP1 so they can sell more.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
New features that SP1 provide include:
-....
-....
-Now you can play MP3s and use the Internet at the SAME time
-....
-...
AFAIK, ReadyBoost is nothing but a SuperFetch cache location. Disabling SuperFetch will make ReadyBoost more-or-less useless, although Windows may still use it they way it (and all other mainstream OSes) have cached for years (decades for some) in that they assume whatever you have just accessed, you are likely to access again.
Using ReadyBoost as RAM (or swap, which is much the same) wouldn't work for a couple reasons. First of all, Flash memory is much too slow on write, especially since the ReadyBoost file is encrypted so that if somebody got hold of your ReadyBoost device they couldn't get any useful info off it that you hadn't intentionally put there. Second, a requirement for ReadyBoost was that the device could be pulled from the system at any time, with no warning, without causing any system instability. I'm not saying it's a good thing - pulling a Flash device in the middle of a write is a good way to end up with blocks in an indeterminate state, and msot of them use a version of the FAT filesystem which means there's no journaling - but it's possible, at least from ReadyBoost's perspective. Obviously, the system can't afford to have active memory yanked out from under it.
The one exception to that, for swap, is that data in swap must be mapped into main memory before use. The longest delay in doing this, by far, is the hard drive seek and read times. Flash has no seek and reads pretty fast, so it may be possible to that when the OS is paging RAM out to swap, it could also put a copy on a ReadyBoost store. Then, when it needs that memory, it first checks if the ReadyBoost store is still accessible, and if so it reads the data into main memory from there (faster than pulling it off the hard disk).
Incidentally, SuperFetch is a feature that, personally, I find quite excellent. People with systems several times as powerful as mine (including vastly faster hard drives) wonder how I can start, for example, EVE Online (install footprint ~1GB) whole seconds faster than they can. Answer: I almost always run EVE at about the same time in the evenings and weekends, and so Vista goes ahead and pre-loads it (unless I'm using that RAM for something else, although I do have a ReadyBoost device as well). For all my dual-core 1.83GHz processor is nothing next to their quad 3.2GHz processors, it's a lot faster because I don't have to wait while the OS pulls stuff off the hard drive. This applies to other programs as well, it's just most noticeable on those that need a lot of data loaded at startup. Many smaller programs start effectively instantly for me, which makes the computer feel far more responsive than it did with XP.
<flameproof>I really wish there was a similar service for Linux; watching that bloody bouncing icon get really tiresome for some programs.</flameproof> If anybody knows of one, or of a way to configure something to give this behavior (hell, I'd recompile the kernel to get this), please let me know. Thanks!
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Remember that Vista installs every feature, including the ones you can't even access with the version of the OS you're running, onto the hard drive (this is why you can do an in-place upgrade from, say, home basic to home premium with nothing but a new license key... the features are already installed, and just need to be unlocked). So, everything from the full capabilities of ISS to Media Center to all the tablet, accessibility, and voice command software is already installed. I'm not quite saying this is a good thing - it makes Vista's install footprint vaguely absurd (over 12GB for the 32-bit edition) - but it's nice to never again need the DVD it came on.
As for the service pack being that big, remember that standalone service packs include all the prior patches as well as new fixes. Patching a fresh install of the newest edition of XP media center (either called SP or 2005, I forget, in any case based off the XP SP2 code base) requires a couple hundred megs of patches and updates. That's an OS with an install footprint only a bit over 3GB that has already received a service pack update to the point that most people considered it "ready" (FWIW, I count Vista as ready enough that I've refused to use XP since RC2, but I'm talking about the public perceptions of XP vs. Vista not my own). I'm not surprised that the standalone pack is so large. The size downloaded to the typical user's machine, which has been kept up to date in general, will probably be at worst a few hundred megs. It will be downloaded by Windows' BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) service, which downloads when the connection has idle bandwidth and is quite good at handling connection loss and automatically resumes where it was left off. In other words, while the standalone may be a bitch, the general user's update shouldn't be too hard.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Quick question: Where is the info about the number of pre-release users coming from? Neither linked page has the number, in either digit or text form, anywhere Ctrl-F could find it.
I ask because I'd like to be one of these people, if possible. I ran pre-release versions of Vista for over a year before it was released to the public, and in general am happy testing things, sending feedback, and finding obscure but usually reproducible errors.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I hear developers and advanced computer users complaining about how bad Windows sucks all the time. I rarely hear of these people trying anything else. If you continually mock Microsoft and have never tried another operating system (especially within the last year or two) your a hipocrite and don't have the right to complain. If you fall in to this category, I'm guessing 80% of 'serious' computer users do, I challenge you to get a distribution of Linux and use it. Don't just try Linux, but actually make a commitment to use it. I promise after a couple weeks you won't go back to Microsoft. **** the man, Vista sucks!