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Microsoft releases Vista
SP1
19 March, 2008
By Patricia Pickett
Microsoft Corp. has made the final version of Vista Service
Pack 1 (SP1) available to customers who want it now via
its Download Center and Windows Update.
The vendor is still recommending that most consumers wait
until mid-April when SP1 will start being pushed out through
Automatic Updates, since that will make the whole download
process easier for them, said Elliot Katz, product manager
for Windows Client with Microsoft Canada Co. in Mississauga,
Ont. However, "tech enthusiasts" can get the update
now by running Windows Update, which will automatically
determine if SP1 is appropriate for their PC. Business customers
wanting to install SP1 on more than one PC can go to the
Download Center, he said.
In his Windows Vista blog, Nick White, Vista product manager
for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, said that if customers
do not see SP1 listed when they run Windows Update, this
could be due to one of eight reasons. One of them is that
the customer has not yet installed all the prerequisite
packages necessary for SP1. To install them, the user must
visit the Windows Update control panel and click on "check
for updates," White said. Katz added that for customers
that choose to wait for SP1 to download via Auto Update,
all of those prerequisite installations will be automatically
pushed down to them before they can install SP1.
In a previous blog entry announcing the release to manufacturing
(RTM) of SP1, White mentioned some conflicts SP1 was experiencing
with a small number of device drivers. "These drivers
do not follow our guidelines for driver installation and
as a result, some beta participants who were using Windows
Vista and updated to Service Pack 1 reported issues with
these devices," he said. According to Katz, in most
situations customers encountered slower performance on their
PCs.
Microsoft has spent the last couple of months examining
reports of driver problems and held off public availability
of SP1 until this month, said White. "We've completed
our analysis and are happy to report that many of these
issues were fixed between the release candidate (RC) and
the final version." The vendor has identified a small
number of device drivers that may still be problematic after
an update to SP1.
There's a "really easy fix" to the driver problem,
said Katz. "You just uninstall the driver and reinstall
it, and you're off to the races." While this solution
may not pose a challenge to IT departments or tech-savvy
individuals, Microsoft wants to smooth out the process for
typical consumers so that they don't have to worry about
the uninstall/reinstall process. "When Windows Update
is run against their PC, and when we're distributing SP1
via Auto Update...if they have any of those drivers, we
will not offer the (SP1) update at that time," Katz
explained. "As the drivers get fixed by peripheral
or hardware manufacturers, we will push notifications out
to users that the drivers been fixed." When they install
those fixed drivers, they will be able to install SP1 the
next time Auto Update runs, he said.
SP1 addresses concerns customers raised about Vista around
compatibility, performance and reliability, said Katz. For
instance, the operating system (OS) will now exit sleep
mode faster, and file copying, whether from one spot on
the hard drive to another, or between the PC and the network,
will also be quicker. Microsoft has provided a number of
automatic updates around those concerns since the OS's release,
but SP1 wraps all of them up into one package.
The release of SP1 gives channel partners a great reason
to revisit the topic of switching to Vista with customers
that have not done so already, Katz noted. "They didn't
need to wait...but now that (SP1) is there, this is an excellent
time to go back to customers and talk about evaluating or
deploying Vista."
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