Vista SP1 Release Candidate Available

Microsoft has made available the release candidate for Vista SP1, after a limited beta begun last September. Informationweek points out white papers telling business users that if they were waiting for SP1 to solve application compatibility issues, they needn't bother waiting: SP1 won't solve them, and in fact might cause applications to break that were running under Vista. Techworld outlines the hoops users will have to jump through to get SP1 installed.

Comments

So...

[Gigiya]

Is it worth installing?

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it run Windows?

MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Quite sad actually. Despite all the negative reports about Vista, the new machines will ship with Vista as OEM, usually without compatibility issues or driver issues because the vendors take care of it, the juggernaut will roll inexorably and gain market share.

There will be no change in the situation as long as the business customers take it in their chin and continue to buy MSFT no matter how much abuse they suffer. If the constant acceleration of upgrade treadmill gets interrupted, at least MSFT will retreat from all its loss leading misadventures and allow creativity and innovation to flourish in other areas of computing. Hopefully. The way it goes, PCs are a lost cause for the next five to ten years.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Mongoose Disciple]

If you'd said:

I am sorry to tell you this. But you are rather bit in the minority on Slashdot

I'd agree with that.

Most people just don't think that hard or care that much about their computers and don't feel like they're being oppressed by Microsoft or anyone else who makes the crap they buy.

Microsoft problem solution

[QuickFox]

SP1 [...] in fact might cause applications to break that were running under Vista. Clearly Microsoft is releasing this to solve the problem with Vista being too popular.

SP3

[Corporate Troll]

I'm much more interested in WinXP SP3 or Win2k SP5...

Re:SP3

[Fast Thick Pants]

I'm much more interested in WinXP SP3 or Win2k SP5...

Win2k SP5 will never happen because MS wants people to think that Win2k is obselete abadonware, even though they've promised to support it until summer of 2010. They refused, for instance, to make a public patch for Win2k's Daylight Saving rules. I doubt they'll even do another post-SP4 patch rollup -- probably just the same trickle of IE6 and DirectX patches we've seen for the last couple of years.

(Of course, you can make your own SP5 and use third party time zone updates. There will probably be a lot of third-party patching as MS continues to drop the ball, pushing the new shiny stuff instead.)

It's a Release Candidate

[WED Fan]

Is it worth installing?

Are you planning on installing it on a production machine?

Are you planning on installing it on your home machine?

The answer is: Don't!. But, if you do, don't come complaining that it broke your system and that's why MS sucks. It's a release candidate.

Are you planning on installing it on a test system and documenting any issues to see how things go so you can plan on how the install will go when it is in RTM?

O.k., go ahead, that's what a release candidate is for. Especially if you plan on providing the feedback on major issues.

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

Now, if you install the RC on your test system, provide feedback on you major error, and then the RTM has the same problem, you can complain.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Mongoose Disciple]

Why would anyone bother installing beta software before writing giant posts criticizing it and proclaiming the imminent death of Microsoft, when it's so much easier to farm mod points by cutting out the installing step? Heh.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[PolyDwarf]

Meh... My company nominated me to be the Vista guinea pig, to test whether the software we produce was compatible with Vista, and to make changes if it wasn't. Given that I didn't have a choice in the matter (Other than to quit... And quitting over that seems a bit dumb), I've got every right to complain.

Vista's shell sucks. I hate it with the burning rage that could only otherwise be produced by 35 angry chihuahuas.

Luckily, geoshell works on it, so I don't have to put up with it.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Opportunist]

I don't need to drop a hammer on my toe to know that it hurts. It's (un)common sense.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Luke Dawson]

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

Sorry, gunna have to disagree with you there. A release candidate is just that - a candidate for release. Just because Microsoft has warped the term to mean "late beta", doesn't mean that's what it is. In many cases a release candidate becomes the final release.

RC's aren't meant to have major errors. RC's are designed to be feature-complete and stable. If a release candidate has major bugs, then it isn't release quality and thus should never have been labeled as such in the first place.

Note: I'm not condoning putting RC's on mission-critical equipment, but I fundamentally disagree that an RC should be inherently considered unstable.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Cro Magnon]

I have confidence in Microsoft. I'm sure their RC is just as good as the final version will be.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Slashidiot]

It would be the same old same old if the SP1 solved the most obvious flaws of the OS. But the thing is this SP will not solve the application compatibility issues, which in my opinion is one of the big reasons why people don't move to Vista. So, not bussiness as usual, but bussiness even worse than usual. Cool.

Re:Seems weird to me

[tbuddy23]

What the heck happens in one hour of waiting?

Stomach cramping.

That's gonna hurt...

[Penguinisto]

I'm thinking that folks Out There(tm) are going to start realizing that you simply cannot make a flawed architecture run any better by adding more duct tape to it.

I'm actually not trolling, but if anything, stating the obvious. Windows NT's setup was a good-enough architecture back when "the company LAN" was just a bunch of computers strung together on a hub or in a ring. The Internet changed that, and just as it almost left Microsoft behind back in 1995 at the apps level, it's almost about to leave them behind right now at the OS level. It's becoming apparent that the thing simply cannot keep up with what's required.

If SP1 actually improved speed and performance, as well as add a better legacy/compatibility mode, they might have been able to eke by without people (outside of /. and the Mac community) questioning it.

Not anymore.

I think we're going to start seeing the decline of Microsoft. It won't crash overnight, but I suspect that, barring a miracle on their part, things will only start falling from here for them. Between Macs at home and Linux at the server room, MSFT's market share loss will be slow at first, then start accelerating. It'll take about a decade, but by then Microsoft's OS will be about as popular as Amiga's was in 1998-2000 (roughly), but will perhaps a larger base of holdouts, depending on developer mindshare and markets.

I've never really said that (at least and meant it) before... now it's moved from being a personal guesstimation to becoming my professional opinion.

Glad I went full *nix a long time ago...

/P

Thank God for small mercies!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The upside, according to Microsoft, is that all applications that currently run properly on Windows Vista will continue to work on Vista SP1.

What the heck is going on here? That applications wont break is an upside? Wasn't the biggest selling point of MSFT has been the compatibility with the existing installed base?

This is a telling moment for all the CIOs and IT managers of corporations. The biggest reason why most companies could not migrate to a competing platform (or at least platform-agnostic technologies) was because they were locked into this proprietary system and it simply costs money to remove all the hacks and remove dependencies. Now they can't dodge the cost. It is inevitable. Given that, does it make sense to pay so much to get locked into another proprietary vendor locked system again? They were fooled once into vendor lock or vendor lock crept up on them unsuspected. But now?

The MSFT strategy is clear. They must make the cost of migrating from XP to Vista will be marginally smaller than migrating from XP to platform-neutral-technology. If the IT managers fall for this trap once more they will exactly be in the same situation five years from now.

The key is open standards. We don't have to bicker among ourselves the merits and demerits of open source vs closed source, or free software with paid software or whatever. Open Standards will level the playing field. That is all we should ask for. Let us duke it out in a level field and may the better philosophy win.

Re:Seems weird to me

[QuickFox]

What the heck happens in one hour of waiting? There is more evil than usual in it, so the exorcism takes longer.

Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[xirtam_work]

One of the biggest reasons people and companies are not upgrading to Vista is backwards compatibility. Microsoft have a free product called Virtual PC that anyone can download. They should include a suitable version of XP with very Vista license and include Virtual PC in the standard install. If you can run all your mission critical apps in a compatibility layer like this (think 'Classic' on the old PPC Macs) then they could really move forward with Vista and make it a modern OS and drop the old cruft they've been carrying for years in the name of backwards compatibility. If they wanted to they could even include Win95/Win98/WintNT or even Win3.1 virtual environments.

If Parallels and VMware can make the desktop sharing between Mac OS X and Windows easy, why can't Microsoft make it easy between Win9X/NT/XP and Vista easy?

Problem is no one at Microsoft in interested in doing this. I was invited to Microsoft's London offices last month and suggested it to a few of their top engineers and sales/marketing people and no one wanted to admit that Vista was a relative failure. You can downgrade to XP but you need your own DVD/CD media, and can't run Vista and XP at the same time, it's one licence or the other. Madness!

Oddest warning

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The SP1 release candidate will have to be uninstalled before applying the final code in 2008, Microsoft warned as it also issued an odd caution on the subject. "After you uninstall Service Pack for Windows (KB936330), we recommend that you wait at least one hour before you try to install the final release of Windows Vista SP1," another support document read.

I have heard phone support script humanoid robots demand that I turn off the modem and router and wait for 30 seconds before switching them on. Kind of made sense, something like make sure all capacitors are fully discharged and the machines are really truly off.

In India there is a popular belief that if an AirConditioner is turned off one must wait for three minutes before turning it on. One technician hand waved about the compressor might be at some odd point in the cycle and suddenly making it run would "break" the shaft. Did not believe him. But in the last trip I find that all the A/C are connected to the grid through "voltage stabilizers" that have a delay timer to prevent the machine from being turned on too soon!

Now MSFT takes the cake! Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! Why? The pagefile is still thinking SP1 is running? The MSFT DRM software has to call in and tell Redmond that SP1 has been really uninstalled and get a confirmation back? Or uninstalled bits of SP1 is considered to be an radioactive waste and they must be beamed to Jupiter to be buried?

Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[kuactet]

Dear reader, I have a confession to make: I love Microsoft. I love it more than I love my family. This ought not come as a surprise to any that know me: a long line of jaded ex girlfriends will laugh bitterly and recall the passion they could never share in, and those few that can call themselves my friends accept that, on Patch Tuesday, their lives are nothing to me.

But above even my love for Bill Gates' corporate loin product is my love for my work. It is a sacred task that has been assigned to me, and I dare not let friends, nor family, nor even software allegiances stand in the way of the fairness and impartiality that is my trademark.

But why do I tell you this? Why do I bare my soul in such a vulgar fashion? It is that you may understand: even now, I will not let my love blind me; I do not write from the perspective of an enamored lover, nor a too-faithful user. No, it is as a Genuine Microsoft User hungry for the Next Best Thing that I pen this, my review of Windows Vista.

Part I: Making the Switch

"Aha," you are saying, having been inundated by countless negative reviews, "He will surely realize that Vista is in every way a downgrade from previous Microsoft products; he will slowly become disillusioned with its clunkiness, bloat, and arbitrary changes made only for the sake of justifying an overzealous Vice President's salary. Over the course of many painful pages, he will finally renounce his love for the Monopolist, and end with an impassioned plea for the adoption of the obviously superior Apple OSX while a swelling orchestral piece rises in the background."

Alas, no. Such a review, while undoubtedly entertaining, would be as far from the truth as, say, religion. No, this is most assuredly a glowingly positive testimonial: Windows Vista is easily the best operating system on the market today. Such an assertion, I realize, may offend some of my readers' base sensibilities; if that is the case, kindly allow me to show you to the exit.

But I have, once again, gotten ahead of myself. Firstly, why I choose to review the Vistas now, rather than immediately following the January launch, bears explaining.

It was a cloudy Monday morning, some two months back, when my erstwhile laptop, a venerable old Compaq, gave up the ghost. The screen, which had been flaky for a number of weeks, finally quit altogether.

After a brief mourning period, I began scouring the print classifieds, searching for a replacement. I soon found one, a dual-core offering from Hewlett Packard. The $600 price tag--considerably less than my weekly escort--made its purchase, and my subsequent review, a foregone conclusion. It arrived the following Thursday, in the hands of a perky blonde UPS driver; I christened it Alex, turned it on, transferred my data (a breeze thanks to Microsoft's new Streaming Automatic External Backup Restore technology), configured it to suit my needs, and resumed my work.

I have been using it, very happily, ever since and, today, shall pass judgment.

Part II: New Features (and what they mean for you)

Aero:

This brand new DirectX-based desktop rendering engine was the focus of Microsoft's Vista promotional materials. It is easy to see why: Vista with Aero is stunning; it puts, in this writer's humble opinion, all other human achievements to shame.

I have been to the Louvre; I have seen the works of the masters, of Monet and Michaelangelo. My heart swelled, and I nearly wept at the sight. But the feeling I get when I gaze at Aero... even that cannot compare. It is more than my simple words can express. My screenshots are but pale reflections of its splendor.

You must experience it yourself: study the subtle interplay between light and shadow, feel the cool ephemer

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[GregPK]

Dude, share the drugs... Even when I worked for Microsoft selling Vista I didn't push that hard. Yea, I would've sold about double the product off the bat. However, My reasons why... -I would've pissed off customers and lost thier trust. -I would have pissed of stores -I wouldn't have sold as much Office. -I wouldn't have sold as much Windows XP -Would have decreased overall Microsoft Sales Even the sales I did make came back to the store screaming about Vista breaking this or that. Do you know what it's like dealing with hysterical customers? Do you? For every great feature Visa brings, it ads 3 other counter-intuitive ones.

Hoops? What hoops?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Techworld outlines the hoops users will have to jump through to get SP1 installed. OK, this is just getting to be sad. Slashdot can't announce anything about a Microsoft product without resorting to needless hyperbole.

Here are the "hoops" you have to "jump through" to install SP1:

1. Download the RC1 package.
2. Execute the .CMD file.
3. Done!

Vista will automatically download all updates you need to install the RC1 and install them over the next couple of days (unless you have automatic updates turned off, of course). If you're impatient like me, you can manually kick off Windows Update and install everything with a couple of reboots.

So, speaking as someone that's compiled their own Linux kernel and most of my apps from source more than a few times, the above is no "hoop" at all. Slashdot again goes out of its way to make things seem worse than they are. It's a Release Candidate for crying out loud! I never see this level of scrutiny and criticism directed at any Linux-related software, be it free, open, or commercial.