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Vista Service Pack One Almost Here

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the like-a-really-lame-christmas dept.

arogier writes "After numerous delays and an actual release reversal, the official release date for Vista service pack one has been set for Tuesday, March 18th on Windows Update and Microsoft Downloads. It will be released as an automatic update on April 18th. 'It's unclear so far how a February snafu will affect SP1's roll-out. Last month, after Microsoft pushed a pair of prerequisite patches to users, some reported that their machines refused to finish installing one of the fixes, then went into an endless series of reboots. Several days later, Microsoft pulled the update from automatic delivery, said it was working on a solution and promised it would "make the update available again shortly after we address the issue."' It would be a good time for those planning to adopt early to perform requisite backups and locate their restore media."

5 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Moment of truth... by FoolsGold · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now to see how many "I'll wait for SP1 before moving to Vista" people actually follow through.

    1. Re:Moment of truth... by Sheen · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I am probably the only one on slashdot who uses Vista AND likes it. I have had exactly 1 issue with vista since I got it in Jan. 2007, that was a missing driver, which appeared on vendor site Feb. 2007 (webcam). So personally I can't see why everyone is slamming it so much. I will never go back to XP. ( this is not ment as a troll post, im just saying what i think of it.)

    2. Re:Moment of truth... by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't have any issues with Vista. It and other programs crash just as often in Vista as they did in XP. But my problem with Vista is not that it has issues, its that I have to completely overhaul my workflow which I've been using since Windows 95 (and improved it ever since). A simple example is the new explorer thing. It no longer has a drop down box with all the parent directories, it shows some kind of history. Backspace no longer goes to the parent directory. In fact, there isn't even an "up" button, just a "back" button. It's more like a webbrowser than a file explorer. I never browse backwards, only forwards. Besides that it's much like a webbrowser, it doesn't allow be to customize the layout and remove all useless elements. Like the favorite folders, I don't need it, just show be the directory tree. I also needed to hack the registry just so that explorer will keep using list view for all explorer windows (dumb directory profiles).
      And that's just one of my annoyances with Vista compared to XP, others include: wasting memory using seriously heavy weight services (Mobile Device Center (aka. ActiveSync) uses 50MB in total while idle), windows search (it's not that great unless you index everything), slow file operations, even more useless eye candy (including stuff you can't turn off), ...

      But it all boils down to a single question: why would you exchange your XP for Vista?
      So far I haven't found anything.

  2. It's faster by Toreo+asesino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Having bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on that's lower spec than my work machine (policy is to update desktops later this year), my laptop almost always feels far more responsive.

    Plus, there's other unsung stuff in Vista i've not seen in any OS - the problem solutions centre (not sure exactly how to translate into English); when I got it I had my one and only BSOD in Vista. Shocked, I rebooted and as soon as I was back to the desktop Windows pops up a message saying "I see something real bad happened; do you mind if I see if there's a solution online?". Click Yes, comes back saying "Ah I crashed because of this driver; there's a update to it here which will fix the problem". It's never happened since.

    So yeah, there's reasons Vista is better. UAC is top too; I like to know when a program is gonna try and change my system (some try that you'd never think would - denied).

    It's an upgrade without a doubt. I wouldn't pay specifically to upgrade mind you, but I appreciate the changes as they come anyway.

    --
    throw new NoSignatureException();
  3. Rock and hard place. by apodyopsis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One thing is for certain..

    ..after the initial release then pull, the bricked PCs, the host of security issues and the whole general fuck up that MS have done over vista so far I predict a cautious, "if I must", approach from sys admins with every possible protection and back-up in place. This is not going to be a stampede for the latest secure patches. Truly MS has been a shot in the foot release for them.

    Second the poster higher up: it will sure be interested to see how many of the wait for SP1 adopters now follow through and adopt.

    Given the general widely held feeling about the the superiority of XP over Vista I cannot see many people clamoring to do so. But on the flip argument MS will withdraw XP soon to try and force adoption of Vista - this would leave many potential customers between a brick and a hard place.

    No bother to me - I've been linux only at home for ~8 years (so I guess I'm biased) - but we sure live in interesting times.