posted on Monday, February 04, 2008 3:44 PM
by
paulfp
RTM release of SP1 Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista
Have a trip on down to
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/04/announcing-the-rtm-of-windows-vista-sp1.aspx and you'll see that Microsoft have RTM'd SP1 for Vista....
I was running the RC for a while before Christmas, it seemed OK but I didn't bother reinstalling it after I had to do a clean install. I didn't have a chance to actually properly test it out (damn final year uni work...) but I didn't notice it being superbly amazing. Hopefully the RAM upgrade which is in the post will help in that department though ;-)
I'm missing my MSDN subscription which has now run out (thanks though James, that was great!) so I haven't been able to download SP1 yet as it doesn't seem to be on the 'public' bits of the MS site yet, and they have quite a slow rollout planned for a variety of probably quite sensible reasons.
Areas I hope are improved:
- Media Center faster to load and more reliable. It seems to break every few months and require a full reinstall of Vista. Not good.
- Better battery life when using it on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400). Apparently this is somewhere they've worked a lot on, so I look forward to properly seeing how it is in the RTM version. First thing I noticed when I switched to Vista back in December 2006 was the shorter battery life, and I was living in Marseille with my laptop as my only computer...
- TBH general performance has always been very good for me on both computers that I use Vista on - I know they've been working a lot on this for SP1 so I can only hope that SP1 will make it even better. Although doubling my RAM to 2GB is sure to help as well. As I write this 86% is used up with WLM,IE7,2 folders,Word,iTunes and Outlook open.
- Hibernate/sleep issues hopefully resolved, as they promise they are. Hibernate on my Desktop PC is a nightmare - *every* time (even with reinstalling) you resume, when you come to the logon screen the keyboard/mouse inputs are frozen so you have to reboot, losing your saved session, so I've not used hibernate. Also sometimes sleep and hibernate modes have been dodgy on my laptop, but reinstalling fix them. But we shouldn't have to reinstall Windows so much!!!
- Yeah, and although I know they haven't done this, once they've stopped faffing around making Windows more secure (which they do need to do, to be fair...) I'd like them to make an Operating system which breaks/gets clogged up less easily. I'm very careful with my system, what I install etc. etc. but still have to format every now and again to get the most out of my hardware.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head that I'm hoping for from SP1. I did run the RC for a while and sent a few bits and bobs of my experiences to MS, so I feel I can say I did my bit to contribute :)
Coming soon to my blog: a full review of my shiny new Nokia N82... absolutely brilliant... er, phone....? computer...? PDA...? I'll decide what to call it ;)