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Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals Released

Posted by Zonk on from the get-prepped-before-the-hammer-falls dept.

wilkinism writes "Microsoft released several detailed documents explaining just about everything you ever wanted to know about Vista SP1. Highlights include a Deployment Guide, list of included hotfixes, and a 17-page list of 'Notable Changes'. In reviewing the Notable Changes document, it seems the company focused on improving reliability & performance in really specific scenarios, so it's no wonder that most reviewers are reporting no noticeable gains."

5 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Specific scenarios? by ccguy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the changelog:

    25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine

    Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.

    I don't think those two (from a quick glance at the doc) are very uncommon...
    1. Re:Specific scenarios? by ccguy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The move operation itself might be as simple as that. The problem is that vista has a tendency to open files for no good reason. For example you can flag 40 files, press shift-del to delete them forever, and have the operation fail because one of the was opened by explorer to display a thumbnail. It's really hard to believe that MS can't put a couple of interns to work on explorer and get rid of these incredible annoying things forever. Or fuck, buy someone else's replacement.

  2. Cliffs' Notes by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 5, Informative

    In my opinion, here are the fixes and improvements ones that the general Windows population might actually care about:

    Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.

    Enhances the MPEG-2 decoder to support content protection across a user accessible bus on Media Center systems configured with Digital Cable Tuner hardware. This also effectively enables higher levels of hardware decoder acceleration for commercial DVD playback on some hardware.

    SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.

    Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.

    Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.

    Improves performance over Windows Vista's current performance across the following scenarios1:
      25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
      45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system

    Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.

    Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.

    Improves IE performance on certain Jscript intensive websites, bringing performance in line with previous IE releases.

    Allows users and administrators using Network Diagnostics to solve the most common file sharing problems, not just network connection problems.

    SP1 includes a number of changes which allow computer manufacturers and consumers to select a default desktop search program similar to the way they currently select defaults for third-party web browsers and media players. That means that in addition to the numerous ways a user could access a third party search solution in Windows Vista, they can now get to their preferred search results from additional entry points in the Start Menu and Explorer Windows in Windows Vista with SP1. 3rd party software vendors simply need to register their search application using the newly provided protocol in Windows Vista SP1 to enable these options for their customers.

    --

    There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
    1. Re:Cliffs' Notes by kamochan · · Score: 5, Informative

      As an IT professional, I would like to highlight a few additional items (please do bear with me, a point should follow :-)

      • Adds support for new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) industry standard PC firmware
      • Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media
      • Improves wireless ad-hoc connection (computer-to-computer wireless connections) success rate
      • Improves Windows Vista's built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup
      • Improves network connection scenarios by updating the logic that auto selects which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available)
      • Enhanced the BitLocker encryption support to volumes other than bootable volumes in Windows Vista (for Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs
      • Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials
      • Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking
      • Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or "patched") while they are still in use by a running process
      • SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location

      Reading the list in another way: this means that with Vista SP1, Windows users will now have modern, cutting edge features such as:

      • Vista can now boot on modern PCs!
      • Vista now reports the actual amount of RAM installed (although it can use only 2GB of it)!
      • Vista can now eject removable NTFS-formatted drives without data loss!
      • Vista can now create and participate in ad-hoc WLAN networks with >50% success rate*!
      • Vista now allows users to encrypt their data drives as well as the Vista system drive!
      • Vista can now back up user's files even when the hard drive is encrypted!
      • Vista now allows a user to actually run a backup!
      • Vista now support 802.11n WLAN networking!
      • Vista can now install fixes to software, without requiring a full system reboot!
      • Vista now allows a user to create a folder with just one (1) UAC verification prompt!

      Et cetera... in other words -- I had no clue that Vista was this badly broken to begin with. Data loss when ejecting removable NTFS volumes? Doesn't know which network interface to use? Cannot encrypt other than the system drive? Cannot backup encrypted drives? 2GB RAM limit? WTF?!?!

      Boggles the mind, quite frankly... If I'd had any of the abovementioned issues in my current home/work machine line-up, I'd had probably found a new system vendor very quickly. I'm constantly moving between a number of 802.11n and g and wired networks, both infra and ad-hoc, often multi-homed, with 2 or 3 virtual machines running various Linux versions, alongside MS Word and Powerpoint, on encrypted disks both internal and removable, and yes backups are critical as this is business use. (Although we know how to make all this happen also in Linux or BSD, having things just work was why me and most of our company has moved to macs...)

      Just amazing.

      *) 50% figure by NOOMA**, ****
      **) Based on wording "improved success rate" taken to imply a significant*** failure rate.
      ***) Significant = double-digit percentage figure.
      ****) NOOMA = Numbers Out Of My Ass.
  3. So long, Vista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been using vista almost for a year now. At first, I was quite happy about it, it is supposed to have exiting new features like IO priority, readyboost, superfetch and all that. And I liked Aero at first. And better security (I must say, I like UAC, it's really no greater pain than sudo).

    But it's SLOW. And while I could live with that, I just couldn't stand it hijacking my desktop. How many times did the system start doing some heavy disk IO, without ANY option to stop it. Even task manager didn't respond so I could check what was going on.

    As time passed, I upgraded from a 3 year old laptop to a new one (Acer 5920G, a fine machine I must say). The only problem is, Vista is not any faster than on a 3 year old system!? Wtf??

    So, the other day I was doing some linux stuff and installed Ubuntu to an external USB disk.

    OH MY GOD (spoken in that-lady's-voice-from-friends-series).

    It's fast. It's nice. And it's fast. And it uses only so little of my 2 gb ram. And did I tell you it was fast? Oh, and file copy is a snap!

    So I've been using it for a week or so and I love it. But then... yesterday I came across this "compiz fussion" thing.

    OH MY FSCUKING GOD THAT'S AWESOME!

    So guess what. About an hour ago I've "cp -a /dev/sdb1 /dev/sda1". Yup. Vista no more (well, it is saved as an image on external drive, just in case).

    I do a lot of .Net programming and I've set up a vmware XP box for development and virtualized XP is waaayyy faster than vista ever was.

    Since SP1 doesn't solve any performance issues, I probably won't use that beast ever again. When I have to use Windows, I'll use XP.

    So... Is Linux winning the desktop in 2008?

    Totally!