Vista Service Pack 1

Last Updated (Thursday, 31 December 2009 18:38) Written by Jan Fagerholm

Well, Vista’s SP1 is right around the corner, and. . . wait – what’s that sound emanating from Redmond? -- there’s a beta release of SP1 coming out in September, and there won’t be a final SP1 until “1Q 2008”?

Well, maybe somebody thinks that Vista is just too stable, and wants to install a beta Service Pack, but I’m definitely on the other side of that Digital Divide.

It’s been eight months since Vista was let out on the street, and while applications vendors have caught up with compatibility, Microsoft has not caught up with stability. I know there are people out there who think that Vista is just fine for office applications and e-mail and Internet and that the new interface is pretty, but the plain fact is if you do any resource intensive work, it just isn’t robust (That’s computerese for “it crashes”) no matter how much memory you give it. Windows XP had similar problems when it first came out, and SP1 was a big improvement in stability. Vista could use the same dose of debugging.

Online updates for Vista have been few and far between since its release, and most of these have been security updates. This is a big difference from Windows XP, which, during the same period, has had twice as many updates; again, for security issues. Make no mistake, Vista is natively more secure than Windows XP. While the application of security software to Windows XP makes it just as secure, it’s an extra expense and extra maintenance. This is not really such an issue for single users, as they are not subject to DoS attacks and things that collapse large enterprises. Single user vulnerabilities are generally user-induced, such as opening infected e-mails and the like, and these are well handled by the numerous retail security suites out there.

Regular Windows users will find several new and attractive features in Vista over Windows XP. Users of other operating systems, such as myself, find a lot of Vista is lifted from other operating systems, particularly Apple’s OS X. This is an advantage to us multi-platform types, as the culture shock when shifting to the Windows environment is much less: in many cases the features were copied right down to the keystrokes required to invoke them.

Disappointments with the release version of Vista are largely what was promised and not delivered, such as WinFS. One of the items I hope Microsoft takes seriously is the pressure from its enterprise clients to make Windows file systems compatible with the Unix file systems that they run on their big iron. Vista badly needs a file system overhaul as much as a memory management overhaul to improve applications reliability. While recovery tools in Vista are improved over Windows XP, it just highlights the fact that they are so necessary in the first place. I can only hope that Vista SP1 will address this problem.

Vista has been the target of a number of negative assessments by the computer press. Criticism of its more restrictive license terms, the onerous new Digital Rights Management (DRM) built into the system, the in-your-face user-hostile User Accounts Control, and, oh yes, the raising of the bar for hardware requirements. For most single users, this $200 OS upgrade will require an $800 or so computer upgrade to run properly.

When I started this column, I intended to keep it up until SP1 came out, which Microsoft was projecting for 3Q 2007. The mainstream computer press has been lukewarm toward Vista, but I don’t think they have been expansive in discussing Vista’s problems. This is the void that I have tried to fill. While I have penned out most of the problems I have encountered with Vista, to carry it on any further I will simply be repeating myself. I intend to report further findings in Vista, but on a case-by-case basis. Expect the next report when the real SP1 gets here. See you soon.