Windows Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals
The long awaited Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is scheduled for a release later this week and Microsoft is doing its best to provide everyone, from the end user to the it professional, with information about the upcoming service pack 1. Five documents in total have been released that address specific user groups.
Two of the documents, Deployment Guide for the RC1 Version of Windows Vista SP1 and Enterprise Guidance for Application Compatibility Testing and Windows Vista SP1, are clearly aimed at organizations and companies while the remaining three documents, Hotfixes and Security Updates in Windows Vista SP1, Notable Changes in Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate and Overview of Windows Vista SP1, might also be interesting to end users who want to read more about the changes that the new Service Pack 1 will bring.
Even if you only look at the last three documents you might find this to be incredibly time consuming. Some of the noteworthy changes that I found are:
- SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista
- Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media
- Improves Windows Vista’s built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup.
- Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth
- Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
- Improves performance over Windows Vista’s current performance across the following scenarios1:
• 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
• 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
• 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system - Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
- Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
- Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.
- Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.
- Adds support for new strong cryptographic algorithms used in IPsec. SHA-256, AES-GCM, and AES-GMAC for ESP and AH, ECDSA, SHA-256, and SHA-384 for IKE and AuthIP
- Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking
- With SP1, Windows Vista will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS. Therefore 32-bit systems equipped with 4GB of RAM will report all 4BG in many places throughout the OS, such as the System Control Panel. However, this behavior is dependent on having a compatible BIOS, so not all users may notice this change.
Update: The IT Professionals guide is no longer available. You can still access the deployment guide though here.
(crosses fingers)
Let’s hope that Vista finally manage to turn into a decent OS then…
To be honest I think that most of this is more marketing blabla and that the benefits for the end user will probably be not that impressive.
WTF is a “a remote non-Windows Vista system”?
Albright – wtf do you think it is? Clue is in the wording… dumbass
Albright, maybe you’re reading it wrong: this phrase should be read as
“a remote non-(Windows Vista) system”
and NOT as
“a remote (non-Windows) Vista system”
For those with Ghetto hardware, and there are many, Service Pack 1 will not be the holy grail. For the rest of us with decent computers, Vista has been the most problem free OS to date, so this will bring little to the table, and many of these issues have already been fixed before hand.
Funny Title. IT Professionals don’t use Vista.
The funny thing about “IT professionals don’t use vista” is that I AM an IT professional, and I do use Vista (and XP and win2k and Ubuntu…).
I am also an IT Pro… who uses Vista. 12 months ago, Vista was not ready for main stream. 6 months ago, it was. It is a better OS than XP, it takes slightly longer to boot… but it is more stable and more responsive once it is up. Non-technical people have problems with it because they are not used to it, and they blame non-compatible hardware/software on Vista but at this point it’s the vendor’s problem… Not Microsoft’s.
Wrong answer – most real IT professionals are saying “I AM an IT professional and I uninstalled Vista”. An increasing number of real IT professionals are also examining migration away from Windows.
Most IT pros I know loathe Vista. Most are running it to be able to support it. It helps to know how to use an OS when you’re supporting it.
I’m a Theoretical Computer Scientist and I use Vista!
Kidding, I run GNU/netbsd
I’m a Theoretical Computer Scientist and I use Vista!
Kidding, I run GNU/netbsd, suckers.
I, for one, never migrated to XP, let alone Vista. Hence there’s no need to uninstall it.
BTW, “45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system”
Compared to what?
“50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system”
Again, compared to what?
This is like saying ducks fly 50% faster then ducks.
This point is listed twice: “Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.”.
PS. I run Ubuntu, used to run Debian, SuSE and slackware.
Seems to me windows keeps getting worse. where is Google’s OS already?
the truth is… the IT market still belongs to M$ (say about 90% or so..) AND ALL OF YOU (incl. all those who consider themselvers “IT Professional…”) CAN ONLY FOLLOW M$… YOU ARE ONLY MOSQUITOS TO M$… AND THINGS WON’T CHANGE IN THE NEAR FUTURE… WHETHER YOU LIKE OR NOT VISTA…