Vista SP1 Release May Be Near

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.

Comments

Geez, try to be fair at least

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.)

Re:Geez, try to be fair at least

[Anonymous Coward]

>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.

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:3 reboots

[badpazzword]

Hey! Adding features and improving performance are non trivial tasks, mind you!

Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never really been a believer in conspiracy theories, but this is getting silly.

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:Reality check

[mabhatter654]

From a single user perspective Vista is nice. I had to buy a new laptop at work and choose Vista simply because we can't live in the past.

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!

The World IS moving to Vista

[rueger]

The vast majority of of people walk in to Staples or Best Buy and buy a computer. That computer includes Vista. They use it.

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, 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.