The fall air certainly seems to have put a spring in the step of OS devs everywhere, and Microsoft's getting in the fun too, releasing the first release candidate of Vista SP1 to beta testers today. Although there don't appear to be many new features on top of what we've already
seen, SP1 appears to be well-received, with testers reporting better laptop battery life, faster networking, and improved wake-from-sleep speeds. There's still no word on when the final release of SP1 will hit, but if you're in Microsoft's tester program, SP1 RC1 is available online now.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mlb @ Nov 16th 2007 8:03AM
I love OS X, but I also have Vista on my iMac so I can run some accounting software that is Windows only. I have been pretty impressed with Vista so far. There was one kinda big problem where upon cold boot Vista would take 3 or 4 minutes to recognize my wireless network. However, after this past update Tuesday that issue has been resolved. I can't complain about anything else. I did have XP on there, and I have noticed a dramatic difference in the time it takes to load applications (specifically Office 2007). While I will always use OS X as my main OS, Vista isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be, and I'm sure that SP 1 will improve Vista greatly.
Nubaeus @ Nov 16th 2007 8:22AM
I just looked out the window to make sure it wasnt the apocalypse...
A mac user with sense and rationality?!?! Even if it's one it's a very welcomed change.
mlb: Do you have a slot for SP1?
Phil Perman @ Nov 16th 2007 8:27AM
That WiFi thing is currently by biggest problem with Vista, it can take a couple minutes to connect to my WiFi when I boot up. If SP1 fixes this then I am very happy.
mlb @ Nov 16th 2007 8:41AM
Nubaeus,
No I don't. I am just a consumer who happens to love electronics. I don't get into betas and stuff much. I'll just download it when it comes time for general release.
Andir3.0 @ Nov 16th 2007 10:30AM
According to the rational of some people: First release Windows is a beta...
Truzen @ Nov 16th 2007 1:05PM
Right, vista has the potential and I am definitely looking toward the public release of SP1 for Vista (though I might sneak beta). Like you I use OS X as my main and Vista as my secondary, but probably for different reasons. X for my design work and Win for games.
SteveS @ Nov 16th 2007 8:32AM
Where is XP SP3? Cut us downgraders a break! 100+ updates post-SP2 is no fun for a fresh install...
Rynth @ Nov 16th 2007 9:35AM
Dude, where have you been? I'm typing this of a XP SP3 machine.
Failing that, create your own custom install of XP SP2 and include the updates... duh.
SteveS @ Nov 16th 2007 10:48AM
Uh "dude" how about a link then? I thought so. We all know how l33t you are getting a pre-beta trojan-laiden version from ThePirateBay but the rest of us would rather wait for something more "official".
Also when you are done slipstreaming the over 100+ updates into your SP2 CD let me know. I'll be running Windows7 by then...
Jack @ Nov 16th 2007 11:21AM
afaik its only a leaked beta, but just whack it into google, should get something
AndrewNeo @ Nov 16th 2007 12:36PM
XP SP3 is in the same testing area in Connect as Vista SP1. I haven't put it on my XP machine, I'm just doing the Vista SP1 beta right now.
Byrongman @ Nov 16th 2007 8:46AM
Does this update reduce Vista's memory load?
pathogen @ Nov 16th 2007 11:54AM
I hope not, I was enjoying the fact that it actually makes use of the spacing we give it. I couldn't justify 2-4 gigs of ram if I didn't have an os with the foresight to precache apps. I was tired of the paradigm of small footprint os's, rather then making use of your resources.
Homeboy @ Nov 16th 2007 12:17PM
In the control panel you can select how Vista uses your memory. The default setting is that is recognises and remembers the software and files you use frequently and have them stores them in memory. If you only have 512-1024MB and feel that it's not working out then you could switch to the other setting which makes Vista use your memory like XP.
Byrongman @ Nov 16th 2007 1:23PM
-Pathogen: You've obviously never tried to run Crysis on Vista
-Homeboy: Where under the Control Panel do I find this memory setting. Totally lost on this one.
If I set-up two accounts I my computer, will this setting affect one or both? Obviously, it would be nice to have a gaming profile with minimal resource use, and a regular profile for when I want all the extraneous little crap to run.
mazzarin @ Nov 16th 2007 1:47PM
Actually Vista has some fantastic memory management - I've used it on a computer with 1.2gb of RAM, I was doing exporting some large datasets from a program not really meant to handle the load - the RAM usage for that program ballooned to over 900MB - and as I watched in task manager, you could see Vista killing its own components left and right to accomodate the increased program RAM usage. Check it out sometime.
jodeltje @ Nov 16th 2007 8:50AM
I wonder what it will be fixing...since no program or whatever stopped working on vista ever since I installed it (never EVER pressed ctrl+alt+del)...and I can't say my wifi connects slowly... we'll see...
And I don't really get the 'ooooh, you need a bigass graphicscard', since aero works like a charm with my onboard video card (just had to give it a little more memory in my bios from 64 to 265).
Don't really see what all the anti-vista shit is all about (for home users atleast).
Andir3.0 @ Nov 16th 2007 10:34AM
Most home users don't know or care what a BIOS is.
David Clark @ Nov 16th 2007 9:28AM
How does one get on this Microsoft beta tester train?
I tried to install the bittorrent SP1 back a while ago and (obviously) it wasn't ready for mass consumption. I couldn't get it to install properly :-/ Here's to hoping this beta is findable and up to the task.
AndrewNeo @ Nov 16th 2007 12:34PM
If it's open, it'd be at http://connect.microsoft.com under the Availiable Connections section once you've logged in to Passport. But, I (and I'm assuming the other users in the beta) were invited in, likely from Beta-ing Vista itself.
JDrago @ Nov 16th 2007 10:14AM
In July I purchased a new HP dv9410us laptop - it came with Vista Home Premium installed.
The laptop has an AMD 64x2 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM (I upgraded from 1Gb), WLAN and 17 inch screen.
Vista made that thing run slower than my previous laptop with similar specs but with a single-core AMD 64 at 1.2Ghz. And by slower I mean a lot slower.
For example, it took 5 minutes to shut down. After I closed all running programs. It took 10 minutes to start back up. So if I had to restart Windows, I just threw 15 minutes out the door. Vista sometimes caused me to restart 2-3 times per day, so I would lose 30-45 minutes of productivity (plus ramp-up time).
Starting Internet Explorer 7 took 10-20 seconds just to pull up Google.com - even if I already had another Internet Explorer window running. Firefox pulled it up in about 5 seconds (first time, then 1 second on subsequent attempts).
I couldn't connect to the Cisco VPN at work (the VPN client software doesn't *quite* work with Vista). So I had to install Microsoft Virtual PC and then install WinXP inside of it to connect to the VPN. Strangely enough, WinXP ran at twice the speed Vista did, and it was inside of a Virtual PC!
I also do development on Linux so I ran Fedora 7 inside of VMWare (won't install under Virtual PC). Before I could get it to work properly I had to disable the User Account Control on Vista. Once the installation finally succeeded (after multiple attempts) VMWare took about 5 minutes to boot Fedora 7. Yes, I know this is faster than Vista boots, but COME ON!
Then, yesterday morning, Vista told me that an update had been installed and I had to reboot. So I finished what I was doing and rebooted. Next thing I know, my USB ports have all been disabled (all 3 of them), Vista Aero Glass has been replaced by "Basic" and my screen resolution has gone from 1440x900 to 800x600 (on a 17 inch monitor). Oh and "Sleep" was no longer an option under Start->PowerIconArrowThingy->*.
Of course HP doesn't "officially" support WinXP on this model, but I was able to get one of their techs to tell me where I could find the drivers (they have so many models that are so similar anyway). I installed WinXP and all the drivers necessary. Took about 2 hours. Now things are much better.
The same machine that took Vista forever to boot up and shut down (with VMWare, etc, etc) now boots up in about 30 seconds. It shuts down in about 30 seconds as well.
I purchased my new laptop because the AMD 64x2 processor would be FASTER than my single-core processor (both in Ghz and in number of cores). Now, without Vista, it is.
David Clark @ Nov 16th 2007 11:18AM
Yeesh. Why is every article about updates/Microsoft/Vista become everyone's soap box for a long diatribe about how they hate Vista.
Manuel @ Nov 16th 2007 11:31AM
HP has literally TONS of crappware in its pre installed verions, a clean install will fix this for you.
pathogen @ Nov 16th 2007 11:57AM
zomg my emachine with all this awesome preinstalled stuff acts weird what do i doz? Just kiddin. Please don't get upset.
Thomas @ Nov 16th 2007 12:16PM
Manuel is right. A clean install of Vista would have solved your problem. I have an HP dv9035nr which has worse specs than yours and Vista flies. 20 second or less boots and shutdowns, blazing application load times. HP loads SO much garbage on their pre-installed OS's it just clogs things up. The pre-loaded XP MCE that came with this laptop had the exact problems you were describing with Vista.
Anyway, find yourself a disk image of Vista on BitTorrent and use your key to reinstall it fresh, without the HP crapware. You won't be disappointed with the performance.
Sam @ Nov 16th 2007 2:09PM
for people that can't setup a computer by themselves (i.e. removing bloatware, installing updates correctly, doing the little tweaks that matter soooo much in vista), go to the geeksquad and have them optimize it... but don't blame vista for your lack of knowledge or HPs price structure making it necessary for them to install bloatware on their machines
JDrago @ Nov 16th 2007 6:10PM
The only "crapware" this laptop came with was MS Office 2007.
No AOL, Yahoo Messenger, etc, etc, etc. No toolbars, no google desktop, no nothing.
I kept it updated with all the patches from Windows Update. I made sure my drivers were up to date as well.
I didn't have any unnecessary services running at startup and no viruses either.
Vista ran like a snail, crashed frequently and finally disabled my USB ports and screwed up my resolution and display settings (per a Windows Update).
I'm glad you folks are not having the same problems I have had, but everyone I have actually met in *person* are reporting similar problems. This must be why so many Vista victims have switched back to WinXP.
Thanks.
tekdemon @ Nov 16th 2007 8:30PM
Thomas and Manuel are both wrong, because my laptop had zero crapware preinstalled that I didn't specify (It's a Dell Vostro, and on the Vostro line Dell drops the bloatware the Inspiron series has since it's meant for business and companies don't care for their PCs to come preloaded with total garbage their IT departments will have to clean up) and the performance is pretty pitiful even though my machine has 2GB of RAM and a processor that is leaps and bounds faster than my last laptop.
Even worse, your suggestion to "simply" do a clean install is not not always even feasible, because for some reson the nVidia driver for the 8400M GS will not install on a clean install of Vista, period. See here: http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/73494
Even slipstreaming the driver into the install disk does not work. The only option right now is to just run desktop drivers modded so that you can install them, but I've had a lot of problems with the non-mobile drivers (not that the mobile drivers are very good either, but at least it's slightly less crashy).
Although this is nVidia's fault more than Vista's, it still means that your suggestion that everyone's laptops are only slow because of bloatware is horribly wrong. We're not just idiots who don't know how to do a clean install, and we actually do know whether or not there's bloatware on our systems, so stop telling people to do useless clean installs of vista-not only do a lot of us already have bloat-free installs, a lot of our computers DO NOT HAVE WORKING DRIVERS FOR A CLEAN INSTALL.
nikster @ Nov 16th 2007 10:08PM
Vista fanboys, you are ridiculous.
I accept that Vista runs fast on your machines. I believe you. However, please accept that it runs slower than a snail on Valium on my machine, and it's not because I did something wrong, it's not because my machine is too weak, or doesn't have enough RAM. It's because Vista is buggy. I have seen it be dead slow on quite a few machines now.
Why is it fast on some machines and slow on others? Because it has bugs.
Please accept that. And let's all hope SP1 takes care of them so we can get this behind us, OK?
PS: I have a Core Duo 2GHz ATI X1600 with 160GB HD and WEI of 4.8. I have a clean Ultimate install via MSDN and all the latest drivers from the manufacturers.
kuthippie @ Nov 16th 2007 10:21AM
maybe you should turn off adobe timetravel or something cuz all is well here.
Kip Granson @ Nov 16th 2007 10:24AM
On my home computers, Vista hasnt' been too much trouble. I absolutely love the media center interface and was able to build a $350 computer that can run Windows Media center flawlessly. I am running vista on 3 home computers, my main desktop, my laptop, and my media center. I've never had a problem with my laptop waking up or grabbing my wireless after the first round of patches, it was a trouble at first though. I am using WPA2 and it seems to work just fine. For a home user with multiple computers and lots of media on their computers, the media sharing features is fantastic. That has to be my favorite part. I did hate the file copying bug they had, but that was fixed a few months ago. I feel the driver issues for any major devices (video cards, audio, etc) are mostly taken care of.
Work is another story. I'm a windows system administrator and we are slowly rolling out vista machines here. I hate it. There are random problems that we will see on various computers.. none of which make any sense to me. Printing is a mess. I'm eager to get my hands on the SP to see if it fixes any of my problems here at work. I can't actually put my finger on what it is exactly that makes me dread Vista at work, it just seems to be a bunch of little things that really drives me up a wall. We run a fairly small shop here, about 370 PC's, about 50 are running vista, and about 5 or so are headaches.
Obviously this is all just my opinion and my observances, and you know what they say.. Opinions are like butt holes.. everyone has one and they all stink.
Andir3.0 @ Nov 16th 2007 10:56AM
$350 PC + at LEAST $160 for the Vista Premium UPGRADE to get Media Center, if you own a previous XP that your upgrading from. (If you buy it outright, $240) Your not running it illegally are you? Microsoft doesn't like the illegals...
Your $350 media center just went from $350 to $510 ($590)... oh, and I'd LOVE to see the hardware you put into that to make it run "flawlessly" for $350.
Peppie @ Nov 16th 2007 11:04AM
Good tips on making butt holes (AKA opinions) clean: http://www.poopreport.com/Ask/Content/stinks.html?from=140&comments_per_page=140 :P
Peppie @ Nov 16th 2007 11:05AM
Wow, that was a dumb comment, I am modding myself down :(
GregA @ Nov 16th 2007 11:06AM
Andir,
I am running a similar thing. This is a computer that I managed to fish out of trash at the end of school last year, with a left over Hauppage tv card and an extra 512MB ram stick (1 gig total) I had laying around. I used an upgrade version of Vista, twice... Working great!
Kip Granson @ Nov 16th 2007 12:01PM
@Andir
Holy crap man.. take it easy. Wait. I know.. it's not possible. we are on engadget and this is a topic about an OS, so everyones gonna have to get their panties in a wad. My point wasn't about the machine I built, just my observations.
No.. I was not counting the OS, I'm talking hardware. I used the copy of vista from an old computer that (GASP!) I legally acquired from Microsoft. I initially had a Dell Optiplex GX260 with 1GB of RAM. it could not handle vista well, so I put Ubuntu on it and gave it to the kids. The specs of the MCE PC I built follows:
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H motherboard (has DVI and HDMI outs, along with optical for audio, which is all i need)
2GB of RAM (800mhz, got it on special from FRY's)
500GB Seagate HDD (again, on special from Fry's)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Cheapish case and PSU(doesn't matter, it's in a cabinet)
Yes.. that does include MIR, which sucks, and Yes.. i already had the Tuner card from my old MCE.. so I guess I wasn't exactly and completely honest, but if you wanted to, you could get under $400 without a problem, including the tuner card.
The motherboard has an onboard sound and video. the video is an ATI chipset (i can't recall the exact model) and takes 128MB from the system. Am i playing games on this? No. But it runs Windows Media Center like a champ. I couldn't be more happy with it. Is it for everyone? Probably not, but it's solid and it works well for me. I've had zero issues with it.
Andir3.0 @ Nov 16th 2007 12:29PM
You know that the license you have for Vista is only legal for that Dell, right?
Andir3.0 @ Nov 16th 2007 12:33PM
I'm just saying... I don't make the rules. Microsoft has already done that.
Kip Granson @ Nov 16th 2007 12:43PM
actually, that is not the case Andir. I did not get this OS bundled with the dell. I got this license separate. It is not tied to a specific machine. I had it initially installed on the dell computer I had which was an upgrade from XP MCE to Vista Ultimate. I removed Vista Ultimate (it was not an upgrade version, was full, retail box) from my Dell, Installed it on my new MCE, called Microsoft, had it reactivated, am legit.
I got lucky when Vista was first released. Won some silly contest and got a free retail (in shrink wrap box) version of Vista Ultimate. That is the copy I am using.
cullen_d @ Nov 16th 2007 11:01AM
Release Candidate Preview... If it was an actual Release candidate that means it would be shipping fairly soon.... Please get your facts right
boe @ Nov 16th 2007 12:04PM
I look at Vist as a house loaded with lead paint, mold, termites and asbestos. Sure you could pretty much gut the entire thing and rebuild it - but you'd take less time and have something nicer if you just destroyed it and started from scratch. Windows 7 will hopefully be such an animal.
I think they should force their developers to use Pentium 3s or low end Pentium 4s so they don't assume it will run fine as long as you have a 4GHz quad core unit with 4 terabytes of memory and a solid state hard drive. Sure hardware is improving but there is no excuse for an OS being slower than the previous version if it offers not benefits- Vista offers no benefits in my opinion.
Thomas @ Nov 16th 2007 12:26PM
Vista runs much much faster on my laptop than XP did. Why should a cutting edge OS be dumbed down to run on 10 year old computers? If your PC can't handle it they still support XP for a reason.
boe @ Nov 16th 2007 1:32PM
Try copying files from a server - if you have identical hardware copying up and down is SLOWER - not matter if you have cutting edge hardware or old hardware. No need to dumb down - the key is to make it MORE EFFICIENT!!! If I get paid by the line of code, of course I'm going to create bloatware. I can write an increment module that takes 3 lines of code or I can write that same code in 150 lines - they both do the exact the same thing.
Brandon @ Nov 16th 2007 12:39PM
Did everyone forget that this is Microsoft, and that every major OS release has been a steaming pile of crap!
Take 98, or (shudders) Me, or even the beloved XP before SP1. They were all bug-infested, security-hole ridden, slow, and otherwise bloated pieces of programming junk that have had literally thousands of updates to streamline and improve them. This is another in the long list of Microsoft flops. Give Vista 5 years and everyone will swaer by it as well.
I am writing this on a Dell D820 Laptop with Vista Enterprise installed, and the machine works like a top; it is fast, it is stable, and with a few tweaks I am not missing my previous XP Pro install at all. I also have it installed on my work machine running a first-release of the Novell Client for Vista, and several other apps like Novell Console One that are supposedly *unable* to even work with Vista.
Vista is a fine OS, just like before it will take time and a billion updates to get it all together. But, right when they do, then it will be time to repeat the Microsoft Cycle all over again.
Welcome to using a PC.
OB @ Nov 16th 2007 7:11PM
Finally, a thread where people aren't on the hate Vista bandwagon and slating it without any arguments whatsoever.
If you have a desktop machine with less than 2GB, at a time when 1gig sticks can be helpfully had for just £15, then get an upgrade. 2GB as a minimum memory requirement for an OS is no longer such a crazy idea, although admittedly no OS has ever gobbled up this much before.
My fully loaded Vista install does take a while to shut down. So I have now just enabled hibernate mode as the default action for my power switch, so it copies all the contents of memory to disk, and off it goes, in about 2 minutes. It takes less time to come out of hibernate. This is a great feature to enable on portable machines.
I think Vista is in a slightly better state than XP was in pre SP1 days. But people don't remember the old XP. SP1 is the biggest thing MS have in 2008, despite what they say. Also DX10.1 is coming, and it's more than a small update.
olpmcg @ Dec 12th 2007 5:25PM
I am currently running this release candidate 1 of SP1 on a lenovo Laptop and agree that the battery life is longer and the start up from sleep is much faster.
Stacey @ Dec 17th 2007 9:07PM
So I installed sp1 rc on my laptop, and uninstalled it the same night via a system restore. I've had no major problems with vista (other than the normal things that sp1 is supposed to fix such as battery life sucking). The rc messed with my control panel and made it inoperable. There were no real solutions to it online, so I had to take the rc off. I was really disappointed because I had people tell me they put it on their computers with no problems and there are a lot of improvements. I guess I'll just have to wait for the real one to come out.
DonCarcharo @ Jan 6th 2008 9:07PM
I just reverted my two Vista boxes back to XP last week. I tried my best but there were just too many bugs. One box couldn't restart, the other couldn't shutdown. One kept bluescreening from video card drivers (across multiple cards) and neither could properly grab my wifi signal from a cold boot (well they did but it took 5 minutes or more).
I'm be eager to see if the update fixes any of this. However even if it does I'm not sure that Vista offers me enough to go back. Overlooking the bugs, there just wasn't enough benefit to warrant yet another change.