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.'"

Comments

Easiest Network config?

[Shaman]

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.

Re:Easiest Network config?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm assuming that Shaman is either trolling or (rather more likely) is trying to do something that isn't "1 NIC, DHCP, default firewall rules, no ICS, etc.)

If you are in an environment where that is all you need, I'd be hard pressed to think of an OS that wouldn't Just Work. Even the more notoriously hostile Linux and BSD distros with text-based installers and a hatred of all things autoconf will typically at least offer to write the config file needed to bring eth0 up with DHCP on boot.

You start to see the differences in configurability when you need to do something modestly unusual or complex.

Re:Easiest Network config?

[WebCowboy]

I just plugged in the network cable

Cable? How quaint!

How's it work with WPA2-secured wireless? Vista kinda stunk at that in my experience, and Win7 would have to do a lot of work to just stink slightly much less be good at it.

Moreover wireless on Vista is almost, but not quite, as stable as Lindsay Lohan and Brittany Spears. On more than one Vista machine I've had the displeasure to deal with the wireless connection randomly decides to go on a bender. I try resetting the router. I try rebooting. No joy. Only fix seems to be to go into the network config, remove the connection and re-enter the security key. No rhyme or reason, and in one case there was a Macbook, a WinXP machine, an iphone a Linux netbook and an HTC Magic phone on wireless with the Vista machine. ALL OF THEM WORKED WITHOUT INTERUPTION EXCEPT THE VISTA MACHINE.

An therein lies the rub: if for any reason you must open that wreched user interface to do ANY config task of ANY kind--whether it be simple troubleshooting, selecting the SSID, entering a key, putting in fixed network settings, the Windows network config UI is the suckiest, most regressive, confusing mess on ANY modern operating system WITHOUT QUESTION. If you want to convince someone that Linux is not harder than Windows, the best way you can do it is to show them how to manage network connections in Vista compared to any current Linux OS.

I imagine that Win7 has made improvements--at least in stability...but that interface? Complete FAIL! I don't care if they've refined it--a polished turd still stinks. It needs to be completely redone again. I know "technical details" can intimidate novices but they should still be accessible. It baffles me as to why the basic details like IP address, netmask, default gateway and DNS entries being made HARDER to find than in XP is considered an IMPROVEMENT.

Cue the morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the morons talking about how Windows 7 is Vista SP3 and that SP1 is SP4.

Re:Cue the morons

[Anonymous Coward]

I present to you for your reading pleasure right from the horses mouth.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mojave-experiment/ Seems they have changed it since the last time I looked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment

What did they learn? People really do not care what it was called just dont call it vista. They even tested it on a group of people.

http://www.whibb.com/win-7-windows-vista-difference.html

The real differences between vista and 7 are fairly 'minor' usability changes. 'faster' should have been in a service pack (oh sp2-sp3)... The under the hood stuff was not really that compelling to warrant a full version change. It is a rebrand to make people think 'oh they fixed a bunch of things'. When the reality is they made all the hard changes in vista. Vista was miserable because of those changes. They had 4 years to fix all of that in the driver stacks... Which is why 7 is firing on all cylinders...

You look at the benchmarks coming out and they are pretty much the same between vista and 7.

Call me a moron if you will. But I see a marketing ploy that is working pretty good.

Re:Only management is fooled

[0racle]

Only morons trust any version number as an indicator of stability. Testing Windows 7 release candidates indicated it was good for deployment on release day for a good number of people and businesses. You probably need to stop hanging out with geek squad 'techies.'

Signals?

[DoofusOfDeath]

'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.'

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.

Re:Only management is fooled

[lukas84]

I can only agree. I work for a small ISV and Microsoft partner. Under the partner program, we've rolled out the Windows 7 RC to 75% of our laptops/desktops. Roughly a month after we were able to get our hands on RTM (i think that was around August 5th), we've upgraded 100% of our machines.

Now, roughly two months after GA, we have several smaller customers (10-20 machines) that are running Windows 7 only.

Only issue we had was laptop-hangs-on-shutdown-because-of-bitlocker. While annoying, it didn't prevent it from doing anything. In the meantime, there's a hotfix for this issue.

There's no need to wait for SP1, if you're a small, agile company. If you're a big corporation, these will likely finish there Windows XP rollouts somewhen past April 2014 ;)

Re:Only management is fooled

[Anonymous Coward]

"It never fails to amaze me how some people insist on wanting to upgrade their machines and do this and that, but they insist on clinging onto some old decrepit piece of crap software"

and it amazes me that software people don't understand the support lifetime that can really be required for software. This is particularly true in an industry or research environment. We have some old spectrometers that interface with the computer using an ISA card, with drivers for 95/98 or NT 4. You think we're going to throw out a $50k piece of equipment because Microsoft wants us to buy something with more eye candy? Or get rid of a scanning electron microscope, because it's attached to a 486 running Win95? We have some EG&G detectors that are integrated into MS-DOS based software. Heck, I saw one lab where they're using an Apple IIe to run an old wavemeter. Still works fine, and it's not like Coherent is offering an upgrade to interface to a modern PC. Or NI, for that matter...they'll drop driver support for older DAQ cards, so moving to a new OS means you have to redesign (or at least waste a lot of time testing) with new (expensive) cards.

Software isn't just about IT systems. It's also about hardware that actually does stuff.