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