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What To Expect From Windows 7 SP1
snydeq writes "The first inklings of a public Windows 7 SP1 beta program are beginning to emerge, with hidden registry keys and a leaked list of post-RTM build numbers surfacing on the Web. 'Beyond the obvious bug fixes and security patches, we'll no doubt see support for the new USB 3.0 standard. Likewise, enhancements to the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi stacks will be slipstreamed in, allowing Windows 7 to retain its mantle as the most easily configured version ever,' writes InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy. 'But perhaps the most significant "update" to come out of Service Pack 1 will be the fact that it exists at all, and that by delivering it to market Microsoft will be signaling that it is now OK for IT shops to pull the trigger on their Windows 7 deployments.'"
Didn't you read the summary? They specifically mention bluetooth enhancements.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
...Techies know that SP2 is the new SP1. Microsoft has started rushing SP1 out the door ever since a certain *cough* Gartner Group *cough* suit-zine told management to never upgrade to a new Microsoft OS until it gets past SP1.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Oh yes, nothing spells stable like a nearly instant service pack!
Windows 7 easily has the most confusing, difficult to configure network properties of any Windows. Granted, I like how it differentiates between "new" network connections as far as work, public, home for the purposes of firewall config, but it's BRUTAL to actually configure the network properties otherwise. All the obfuscation gets in your way and makes your teeth grind.
...Steve
Cue the morons talking about how Windows 7 is Vista SP3 and that SP1 is SP4.
An initial release of an OS was Microsoft's "signal" that it was ready. People eventually realized that MS's "signal" couldn't be trusted, and they adapted by developing their own "wait for SP1" wisdom. This has not been lost on Microsoft.
If MS's marketing dept. sees that it takes "SP1" to get people to buy their OS, they'll call something "SP1" whenver they want to spur initial uptake of one of their products. So we may find before long that we should wait for SP2 of a given MS product to get the level of quality we want.
Marketers are often sleezebags. Their goal is to drive sales, regardless of how much misleading or deception is required to do so.
Spoken like a person that's never seen or used Windows 7.
No doubt, I _STILL_ don't know exactly what a 'homegroup' is and why I can be part of a domain (or workgroup) at the same time as a homegroup. I don't know why Windows Media Player daemon sometimes pegs both my cores or what it's doing since I have the sharing service off, either. That being said, the new firewall is money compared to the old one. I just wish they wouldn't rearrange the control panels and rename all the settings every version of windows. Imagine my surprise when I had at least five separate places to configure my network and none of them sounded like what I was looking for!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
let me see... ...an update?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
What did you expect based on his sig?
I know that my experiences of Windows 7 shouldn't be considered as true for all, but in general day to day usage, I've had no problems at all.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of two bugs in Windows Backup. One where it reports that your backup drive is full and that you need to clear space and then presents you with an option to adjust the backup or let windows manage it automatically for you. The problem is that Windows is already managing it automatically for me and therefore it shouldn't be telling me this.
The other issue is that one of the buttons hidden somewhere within backup pops up a windows with a message along the lines of "Not implemented.". Looks like they ran out of time coding that bit!
I have no doubt that there are lots more.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Any good marksman knows that you try to squeeze the trigger, instead of pulling it. So in that way, Windows 7 is more like a rotten egg.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Somehow I suspect you haven't actually used it. Either that or you're just a huge anti-MS bigot.
Windows 7, SP0, is actually pretty darned good - especially compared to that steaming pile of mediocrity (Vista) they put out last time. It's faster, the UI is cleaner and more useful (most of the time), it's very compatible with a wide variety of hardware. Even hardware that Windows 7 cautioned me probably wouldn't work...works.
This is probably the first usable 64-bit Windows version for the desktop.
We have several clients who have, or who are in the process of, rolling it on on their desktops and in every case they're quite pleased with it and their staff is finding it to be a productive work environment.
-B-
"I'm a PC and a really quick service pack was my idea." ----- "Hello, I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC" "Hey PC, what's with the all bandages there? Are you okay? It looks like you're pretty banged up." "Well actually I'm just patching myself up because that's what PCs do." "Boy, that's probably going to hurt peeling all those bandages off later." "Yeah...later...right..."
>but I'd be happy if Microsoft fixed the bug where my search indexing daemon crashes in Vista before they started on the Windows 7 bugs.
Pretty sure they have two teams here. Its not one one guy in a basement being horsewhipped by Balmer and Gates. Fixing one thing in 7 doesnt mean something doesnt get fixed in Vista.
I wish the would bring back the 3-license family pack. I have 2 xp machines and 1 vista machine and if I could upgrade the three for $150, I would. Right now, 3 upgrade licenses would be over $300. So, I'm not upgrading.
Just wait, they will screw it up.
XP SP0 is at LEAST 40% faster than XP fully patched.
Problem is it get's infected in 6 seconds on a non firewalled network.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...to restart the dead corporate PC market. M$, Dell and HP should take a tip from the National Rifle Association by warning customers that Obama is coming to take your 'puters away."
The bad news is that the problem is deeper than any, or all, of the following:
XP suffices for most corporate needs (and it works on their 4-year-old hardware).
Vista forced companies to stick with, and develop & purchase line-of-business apps for, XP (and the app vendors were more than happy to stick with 32-bit coding, require local admin rights for everyone, and avoid UAC).
Vista SP1 (and SP2) proved that some problems are too deep to be fixed, or even improved, by service packs (honestly, build a clean Vista SP2 machine: it will still suck).
Corporations can't afford to replace 70% of their desktops, and half of their core LOB apps, just because Windows 7 is way cooler than XP. (Really, it is: I find XP boring now).
As for security, most corporate Desktop Architecture departments still think their XP boxes are secure, even seven years after the Blaster worm blew through a vulnerability that had been patched months prior by Microsoft.
There is no key business reason to migrate any company larger than 3 desktops to Windows 7.
Well, I know, and despite the negative hype I think Vista's a very good and stable OS, so you're right that my post is perhaps a bit unfair.
That search indexer bug is fucking annoying though, and it's been around for months. I'm sure there's one specific file or file format causing the crash when it gets indexed, but how do I find out which one?
Comment of the year
When I was a kid, we'd take a trip every summer down the Mississippi to visit my auntie in her antebellum house
Me too, 'cept it was my Granny and her antebellum world that I would visit. Then I would run barefooted all day long, climbing trees, free as a song.
Wait - Hugh, is that you? It's me, Ray!
Funny-ass post, as you often provide. I don't agree with your conclusion, but I got a nice chuckle.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
And, sadly, 9.2 seconds even behind one!
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
I just got this computer from work, so it'll be another year minimum before I can justify trading it in for a Windows 7 box.
Or if your company is switching to Windows 7 and has an Enterprise copy, just install Windows 7 on your current system! I'm sure there will be some bug fixing going on in Vista still, but don't expect them to put much effort into it seeing as how Vista never sold too well and most people are more than eager to switch over to Win 7.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Problems with explorer.exe. No, not internet explorer. Their file manager has issues with selecting files where you could end up selecting files you didn't intend and having them be deleted as part of what you do. For instance, if you use the shift plus mouse click to select a range of files then choose to delete you might delete files you didn't want because the shift+click selected more or at least some that you didn't choose. The next normal step is to delete them, often without reviewing the names (since explorer.exe doesn't allow you to review the names--unlike dolphin in KDE which provides you a list of files it is going to delete before it deletes them).
So, be careful or you could wipe out a lot of important data inadvertently.
There are also problems with networking. After having Win7 on for a long time and having numerous computers access the files on the device over the network the computers network can begin to slow incredibly. For instance playing media files, one after another, after a long time the network connection can slow so bad that the media files begin to skip or break up thus causing artifacts on the screen. It only happens here under Win7, not Vista and not any Linux distro.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I agree and I'm not bothering either. Sure it works fine on my water cooled rig but I'm using two laptops and some old Duron systems as well. In these systems Windows 7 is from just slower to unbearably slow compared to XP, while XP still allows the old Duron systems to be used for Firefox browsing, text editing and word processing comfortably and securely (with the addition of Comodo & Avira).
As for bluetooth, there is always the Widcomm/Broadcom stack which is miles better to Microsoft's.
So, what's the point in Windows 7 ? A cooler UI ? I would rather play a game than stare at the OS UI...
Nah, Windows 7 is more like a point release. 6.1 if you will to Vista's 6.0. They had to give it a new name because "Vista" became marketing poison. But that's why 7 has done pretty well out of the gate stability wise, it's not really a new OS at all. It's a refined version of the last one.
It's not LIKE a point release, it IS a point release. It literally is Windows 6.1 to Vista's 6.0, whether I will it or not.
My wife's Dell laptop (running Vista) works fine on our wpa2-secured wireless connection.
I just recently set up the wireless at work to use WPA2 Enterprise with an Airport base station and Mac OS X Server 10.5. With Mac laptops you just enter your username and password and click "continue" when it complains about a self-singed cert. And done. I've also connected with XP and 7, and they both have different multi-step with multi-sub-step procedures for connecting the first time. I suspect that if we were a MS shop, it would Just Work (as the steps are mostly undoing stuff relating to it trying to authenticate with your Windows domain credentials), but since we're primarily Apple, it's a huge PITA.
...A brand new screensaver. Ballmer throwing chairs at you :)
The most pressing argument would be that XP is a ridiculously outdated OS, well over a DECADE old at this point, and that XP's default security configuration is absolutely atrocious. Because it needed to be compatible with the programs from the Win9x era, by default it sets up every user as an administrator(root), which everyone who has ever used a Unix-like OS will recognize as a cardinal sin. XP probably wouldn't have had half the viruses, trojans, and overall security threats if it had gone the route of every other sane and modern OS on the planet and set up its users as regular limited accounts. This was practically impossible in the early years of XP of course, as thanks to lazy programming which demanded admin rights nearly 100% of the time, running as limited user meant you could scarcely run an application to play an audio CD.
Later on, MS patched in the "runas" command, a function analogous to Unix "su", making it possible to run admin commands through an administrator account without having to log out completely. This was a good thing, and while it greatly eased the hassle of running a limited account, it was still not as robust as the Unix "sudo" command. While su runs as another user, sudo elevates the current user to administrative privilege, meaning if you install a program, the installer will make changes to your own profile if necessary, instead of to a different administrator's account as the runas command would do.
Windows didn't gain true sudo functionality until Vista introduced UAC, and as much as people bemoan having to click OK whenever running a task requiring admin privilege, this is exactly how a properly security multi-user OS is supposed to function. Running as a limited account in Vista/Win7 is the default operation and it is a sane, standardized security protocol. Running all the time as an administrator is a stupid, risky, boneheaded thing to do, but unfortunately in XP the only alternative is to put up with the frustration of running a semi-functional limited account.
I'd install a few apps and after that the firewall would just disable internet access. Sure, some of the time it'd say "app Y is trying to access the net, you cool with that?" but sometimes it wouldn't. (And then it wouldn't mention which one it was complaining about.) Oh, the first time this happened it was actually worse. The firewall decided to block an app while I was at the log-in screen. As in no keyboard access at all. I had to log into Win7 in safe mode, disable the newly installed app just to log in. I'm guessing a 3rd party firewall would be an improvement. (Since it couldn't be worse.) Oh, I've had no problems with the Vista firewall which is odd. (Since I figure the one in 7 is just an upgraded version.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Hm, I wouldn't expect reply such as yours in response to a post made by BadAnalogyGuy ;)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Windows 7, SP0, is actually pretty darned good - especially compared to that steaming pile of mediocrity (Vista) they put out last time. It's faster, the UI is cleaner and more useful (most of the time), it's very compatible with a wide variety of hardware. Even hardware that Windows 7 cautioned me probably wouldn't work...works.
I actually prefer vista. With vista, you can turn off the crappy new UI and go back to the classic interface. Windows 7 doesn't let you do turn off the crappy new UI. This fact alone is going to delay Windows 7 deployment for years.
The other very annoying change is the way MS messed up the domain logon screen. They make the user login as "domainname\username" or "username@domainname" instead of having separate boxes for the username & domainname. This causes enormous user confusion.
This is probably the first usable 64-bit Windows version for the desktop.
Bollocks. 64-bit XP has been out for years. Works great.
With all patches and updates, here is the question: will Windows 7 SP1 allow the following to work:
Canon Canonscan LiDE 30 scanner - Win7 Not supported - Ubuntu/OpenSuSE - works perfectly
HP Color Laserjet 3600N networked colour laser printer - Win7 Not supported - Ubuntu/OpenSuSE - works perfectly
NOTES: Fair's fair: the netbook's WiFi Linux driver (both O/S's) will not connect to WEP WiFi APs (WPA works fine).
All Win7 Home versions have had the ability to connect to domains REMOVED. All previous versions of Windows allowed this.
Windows7 Home (all versions) is a DOWNGRADE from Vista/XP in terms of this connectivity.
Microsoft should do the right thing and return this 'feature' to the home edition(s) - you can't connect Win7 to an NAS server for basic backups - for example.
The default NTFS filesystem that Win7 creates is NOT backward compatible with XP/Vista.
Boot times to having network and desktop on the desktop machine: Win7 - 64 seconds, Ubuntu - 32 seconds
I won't editorialize - draw your own conclusions.
*** Don't be dull.***
I run primarily Linux desktops. I installed Win7 a few weeks ago on a couple Vista-32 and Vista-64 laptops (one with the vendor supplied upgrade, the other with a 3-pack update). So far, nothing to complain about. Some apps still aren't Win7-64 ready, but for the most part the 32-bit and 64-bit versions are nowhere near as problematic as Vista. I am not a huge fan of the networking configuration tools as it's been difficult finding the correct tools for certain tasks and some Java64 glitches (mostly related to heap size issues), but it works.
Yes for "Windows" it IS good but if you have used -ANY-other good OS in the last few years... Windows 7 is nothing more than what is "expected" of an OS these days.
Something is wrong with either your drive or your Windows config. Windows, I'll freely admit, isn't the best at estimating time. I don't know what algorithm they use, but it sure as rarely matches the profile I'm using. In XP, Vista, and now W7, loading video files from my USB drive via a PC to my unRaid server is pretty much constant at about 150-200Mb/s; i.e. about 8-12 minutes for an 8-9GB movie. My network-fu sucks, so most transfers are limited by my poorly configured 1000bt setup to about 200Mb/s regardless of source.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I don't know if it's bigotry so much as convenience and sticking with what works. If XP does everything you need it to do and your vendors are happy to support it, why should you expend the time, energy, and money to roll out an upgrade? Yes at some point you will have to upgrade, but why not get every ounce out of those XP licenses before you throw them away?
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
6 seconds? I got it down to under 3...
Well, I find that "username@domainname" is much more intuitive and especially memorable than separate boxes or "domainname\username". I think that's because our user names are in the form of firstname.lastname (with some exceptions for people with same names) so when combined with domainname you get "firstname.lastname@domain.TLD" which is also user's email address.
You don't know what you don't know.
The issue that will get me to upgrade is when I want to increase the RAM of my computer. If I want to have a Windows machine running more than 4GB of RAM, I have to upgrade to a 64-bit OS and Vista/7 is better than XP in that regard.
It happens all the time in big companies: I've seen it.
I used to design and deploy XP images for large, multistate corporations. Time and time again, business units within the larger company would demand that their users be granted local Admin rights... or else their custom applications wouldn't run right.
It's an argument they would always win, since the apparent cost of making some global group local Admin was less than the cost of replacing the LOB app affected.
Thanks for that information. I realized after I hit Submit that I should have inquired what others' experiences were like (I did preview, but that still wasn't enough to save me from myself). I'm going to guess its my Windows config because this experience is uniform across all my external hard drives and, with the one exception, they are all USB2. I'll have a look at that.
SP2 is faster than SP0 on most machines, it was SP3 that tanked performance which is why I've never bothered to install it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Actually, there's a first-party product for that now. Too bad Microsoft would be sued if they tried including it with Windows.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
>>Windows 7, SP0, is actually pretty darned good - especially compared to that steaming pile of mediocrity (Vista) they put out last time.
Hey, have you heard about Microsoft Mojave?
It'll be coming out soon.
<quote><p><i>Windows 7, SP0, is actually pretty darned good - especially compared to that steaming pile of mediocrity (Vista) they put out last time. It's faster, the UI is cleaner and more useful (most of the time), it's very compatible with a wide variety of hardware. Even hardware that Windows 7 cautioned me probably wouldn't work...works.</i></p><p>I actually prefer vista. With vista, you can turn off the crappy new UI and go back to the classic interface. Windows 7 doesn't let you do turn off the crappy new UI. This fact alone is going to delay Windows 7 deployment for years.</p><p>The other very annoying change is the way MS messed up the domain logon screen. They make the user login as "domainname\username" or "username@domainname" instead of having separate boxes for the username & domainname. This causes enormous user confusion.</p><p><i>This is probably the first usable 64-bit Windows version for the desktop.</i></p><p>Bollocks. 64-bit XP has been out for years. Works great.</p></quote>
64-Bit XP is based on server 2003 code which is why driver support is lacking at best. While it is stable, it seemed a bit slower than 32-bit XP with some functions i use regularly.
I have some hardware that didn't play nice with 64-Bit XP (my sound card for instance) because the drivers were thrown together in a "good enough" fashion that required software from Nvidia and Realtek be installed to have full functional surround sound. Once both drivers were installed, I couldn't adjust the volume for channels individually without breaking sound all together, not a huge issue once it's known but a pain to figure out and get working initially.
don't need a XP partition just use XP mode.
Firewire / e-sata is much better even more so for big file moves.
Well, and that is true. However, all my external drives are USB.
Firewire (IEEE 1394) is broken in Windows 7 64bit. I've installed this OS on four PCs with with Firewire. Two PCs were AMD based, the other two were Intel. All four PCs had different chipsets. All four PCs did not have a single working Firewire port regardless of which external drive we used.
I've even tried replacing the driver with the built-in "legacy" driver. No go. Even if I try transferring data using the robocopy command, it just stops after a few megabytes of data. In short, it's not a hardware or GUI (explorer shell) issue. It's something at the core of Windows 7 that breaks firewire support. I hope SP1 addresses this issue.
Life is not for the lazy.
I have used Windows 7 and I hate it. Is that ok with you? Does everybody have to like it?
I just want XP, it works for me, I don't have to learn new shit. I don't have to worry about them moving the control panel around.
7 offers nothing new for me, for it to be worthwhile spendying anytime learning new stuff.
1) SCSI cards: 29160U is not supported. I was pleasantly surprised, as that was my
32bit Xp install, but seriously no support for this card? Humm.
2) Ok, some esoteric cards I can understand, but a RocketRaid 464 has had Win2k/Xp
drivers built into the OS (not sure about Vista). An IDE card that does RAID 0/1
onboard and 5 w/CPU, but in addition to not seeing the card, it would CORRUPT the
filesystem. During setup w/o driver, corrupt. left unconnected and as soon as
I'd check under xp = OK, 7 = corrupt. Of the two times it could read the disks
any copy to the drive (formatted under xp and 7) it would BSOD the memory mgmt
module.
Joy. Luckily recovery was easy, but JFC 6 hours+ to get it all back each time.
7 was/is fast, easy to get used to and GPU folding was pretty peppy, but can't
live w/o that RAID card when all is said and done.
I will give 7 some credit, I've got a dual boot of XP and 2k3 both 64bit and
guess what? both the SCSI and RAID work flawlessly. Not folding as fast as 7,
but smoother than xp32 by a smidgen.
Strangely I've got an itch to get redhat AS4 installed, but not when I've got
school to deal with. Next break, perhaps.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Like some commenters noted, there is no need to wait until SP1. Windows 7 has been through a very wide Beta, then RC, RTM and finally the GA last October. During this whole process, IT Pros around the world have been able to test the new OS for performance and stability and have found Windows 7 to be great! If you want to follow us on Twitter (@MSSpringboard for IT Pros or @CIOsConnect for... CIOs) we can point you to people's feedbacks on the topic. Alex Microsoft Windows Client Team