Windows 7 SP1 public beta now ready for download
By Vlad Savov 
posted July 14th 2010 6:55AM
posted July 14th 2010 6:55AM
Slightly ahead of schedule, Microsoft has dished out Service Pack numero uno for Windows 7. The hot-selling OS has been a revelation since its release and it's therefore no surprise that this update pack does nothing remarkably new or important. It collates all of Microsoft's patches since launch into a neat little (well, not really, it's 1.2GB in size) package and throws in a few other hotfixes to boot. Microsoft treats its betas rather unceremoniously, however, so don't expect any support with this thing until it goes final -- which we're hearing might not be until early 2011. We'd say that's a long way out but it's not like Windows 7 isn't treating us well enough already. Hit the source to obtain the download, if you must.[Thanks, JagsLive]
@MosesusedaniPad
75% of WORK PCs. If you're going to use recent news to troll, at least read said recent news.
Is there something about longs bodies of text people are finding hard nowadays? Has Twitter done this?
@MosesusedaniPad - 62 percent troll, and going DOWN :
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=11
@Tes - Beat me to it :D
@Tes
Agreed.
But look at his name, we can't fault him for his mistakes. It's in his nature.
@MosesusedaniPad
You're right, they should have called it Snow Windows 7, that way they would guarantee impulse upgrades and maybe even get away with charging $30 for the privilege.
@MosesusedaniPad I think Moses should come and whack you over the head with an Ipad for having such a stupid name/comment. Moses used a Tablet G-d gave him.
@Tes I get a head ache if it goes over one line or has any words of 6 characters.
Does it increase lappie battery life?
@Jake88
Yeah, it magically adds battery cells. Come on - the only way you're going to get longer battery life is by turning the screen brightness down, cutting the power of the CPU, shutting down those spinning platters or the like - something you can easily do with power management already.
@dcnoren
You gave the smart-ass answer, but not the smart one. There are plenty of things they could have done to increase battery life. Did they optimize or fix any background processes that were hitting the cpu and/or disk too much? Any improvements in caching? Any new power management features?
To answer Jake88's question. At this point Microsoft is not reporting any changes that can improve laptop battery life.
@DJ Shizzle Yep that's exactly what I meant. I was hoping they may have optimized the OS even more to improve battery life. Great answer Shizzle!
Does this patch, fixed the hibernate problem with intel onboard cards? After machine sleeps there is nothing you can do to evade the "no network card error". You have to restart you computer.
@giuice
If there is already a patch for it then probably. If not then no. I haven't looked into the hibernate issue so I'm not sure.
Who cares about W7 SP1???
OSX 10.6 + XP on Parallels works great for all my IT needs!
Piece of mind and best both worlds....
@dtakias
A lot of people use their computers for more than IT needs. Most people prefer to not use a virtual environment and stick to one OS. As a one OS solutions Windows 7 is far superior to Windows XP. Also a lot of people would rather not pay then Apple tax and then the MS tax on top of that. So maybe you don't care about Windows 7 related news, but a lot of people do.
@gpsxsirus
I can understand all that. Was only trying to express another point of view.
I do care about Windows 7 news, although I believe that Microsoft's decision yesterday to extend XP downgrade till 2020 shows how much the consumer/business market is still loyal to a 9 years old operating system.
@dtakias
No, it showed the complexity of upgrading to a new system in enterprise environments. Try to sound like you know what you're talking about because yesterdays news had nothing to do with the consumer market.
I'm sitting here right now using Windows XP. Not because I want to but because we have to support clients who don't need anything Vista or W7 has to offer for what they do. Our software sits on top of the OS so no feature that could be added makes any difference...so why upgrade?
At home on the other hand, we have three computers running Windows 7 because as a gamer and user of media it's the best option there.
@Tes
Calm down mate. Not all existing home users are using Windows 7. There are still home users that believe that Win7 cannot give them anything more than XP which is not true.
You sound like you haven't done your research either! Windows 7 shipped with ready enterprise deployment tools and can be deployed across 100K workstations. Vista was not ready for deployment where Windows 7 is !
Basically I am sitting here on my Cent OS workstation and I couldn't be happier.
I work in enterprise environments and I agree that for more business users Win7 has not much to offer. Although when combined with Server 2008R2 + Server 2008 domain function level you'll be amazed at what you can do ;)
@dtakias
"You sound like you haven't done your research either! Windows 7 shipped with ready enterprise deployment tools and can be deployed across 100K workstations."
You obviously have no clue about the complexity of testing applications on a new platform and certifying that everything works as intended. Deploying isn't the issue. XP, Vista, W7...they are just OS's. People do more than running office you know. We deploy boxes with no superfluous software on it. Only the bare OS and our product.
The point was, your "point of view" was unnecessary noise important to only you. Who cares? Windows 7 users care, of which you are not one, so why comment?
Right now there are several other entries on this blog; glasses free 3D panels, electric car charging stations, metallic Velcro. By your logic you should have to comment on each and every one to state your lack of interest. Seems rather backwards, no? Wouldn't your time be better served commenting on things that DO interest you?
@Tes
Did you actually expected M$ to test your applications on W7?
This is why they gave away XP Mode for free.
"The point was, your "point of view" was unnecessary noise important to only you. Who cares? Windows 7 users care, of which you are not one, so why comment?"
Dude, take it easy, it was meant to be a joke, I think you need holidays mate, maybe a Girlfriend/love as well!
@dtakias
"Did you actually expected M$ to test your applications on W7?"
At that point ladies and gentlemen, it dawned on me that I had been trolled.
@dtakias Just shows what u know, If u like OSX so much then f#ck off to the mac forums! tool!
@guigsy
Good language there mate, well done.
Microsoft, you better have found a way to block those pesky rogue antivirus programs. If I get asked to remove "anti virus pro 2010" again, I may just my job.
@BillOwnz
It might help if you didnt click on all the free billygoat porn sites...
@BillOwnz They did, its called Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free and blocks all of those stupid fake AVs.
If you are bitching about your work computer, convince your IT department to adopt ForeFront Client Security.
@BillOwnz Uh stop installing or downloading them, learn how to protect yourself geez.........
More POS from m$ windoze
@Makali Awww someone had a bad experience with Vista and is now the Apple Fanboy. Tell you what, you go pay for the updates to your OS and leave us grownups alone.
@Makali Enjoy Mac shitdom! I'm quite happy with my thousands of game titles, hundreds of thousands of apps, cost effective, multi-platform, cheap to upgrade.....Well, U get the idea! Stop dissing on MS threads and f#ck off back to the Mac forums!
@Willow
Wow, You're so anti-apple he didn't even mention them and you labeled him Fanboi. Wow. That's some seething hatred.
How I see it, and being a windows, Linux, UNIX, and AIX admin without a Mac in the company of 15K employees, what I see is this:
Win 7 was rushed to market to simply get past the bad press of Vista (it wasn't even THAT bad, but it missed on many promises, need more horsepower than was admitted, took the heat, and it had to go). Win 7 was not ready, not nearly so. NONE of the features promised for Vista that were withheld made it into 7 either. It's the vista kernel with a prettier GUI and some redesigned control panels and a security system people were less pestered by. It was what Vista would have been if M$ had actually asked people first before releasing it. It's still generally a broken OS by most standards: D2D image backup STILL doesn't work, no replacement for NTFS, no native EFI support, unfinushed control panel system, lack of UI feature unification, no virtual desktops, it's not done yet, but now it;s too late to easily fix (again).
Now, here, after more than a year, M$ comes to the rescue, for which we still need to wait 6 more months to see it in circulation, with what? a patch rollup? This is not an R2 as we should be seeing, with changes and new features and corrections of the UI, but nothing more than already released patches, and a few hotfixes, bundled into a pack, including bloat many admins currently have selected to not download and install at all, and this SP is going to force install eventually, and do what exactly? nothing but cause a bunch of machines to die in the process, and the rest to have to re-install all the patches out since SP1 went RTM in the first place.
If it's nothing more than just patches, release it as a patch ROLLUP, not an SP. Let my systems install the one rollup instead of hundreds of patches to get there when I'm building a new system; that I can use. A forced SP version change that gives me no fixes I have not ALREADY installed (and some I chose not to); that wastes my time and patience and wastes the companies money on the 10% of people who's machines won't work after the rollout happens.
What we WANT is Win 7 R2, not Win 7 SP1. Fix what's broken (not from a bug perspective, but from a USER and ADMIN perspective), and add the features you promised would be in Vista that you still have yet to deliver. Then I'll give M$ credit.
We've been writing so many apps in Java lately, and moving desktop apps into web based apps, than in a couple of years, we won't have a single in-house app that can't run on every platform, and any 3rd party apps we buy we insist on cross platform support, so they're not an issue either. M$ will no longer be a requirement for a desktop OS in maybe 2 years tops (though we won't leave it behind on servers for a very long time, we probably won't have anything M$ aside from Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint in 2 years either, all the web facing stuff moved to WebSphere already). We could switch to Linux, or much more likely OS X for our desktops and nothing would break.
We even did a fairly exhaustive study of the costs of OS X desktops vs Windows and you know what we found? On a 4 year depreciation, including all costs, maintenance, support, applications, etc, OS X was less than half the cost of our cheap Dell Windows machines, even including Office for OS X in the equation. (dropping the M$ suite saved even more, and yea, we could use FoSS word processing and spreadsheets for simple stuff, but collaborative projects would suffer and labor would increase in excess of the savings, I must admit, the cross app integration, proofing tools, and collaboration power of M$ office is second to none, and worth the cost many times over). Using Linux instead of OS X or Windows was actually the most EXPENSIVE option, due to the heavy manual support processes needed, and lack of good enterprise tools for Linux, not to mention compliance issues.
We're of course not even considering such a switch yet, other than to run numbers, we're sticking with Windows, and moving to win 7 soon, but we're moving into a position where we COULD pull the trigger anytime in the future, as are many other firms we've talked with. Only a few people need Windows to run legacy apps, or windows only apps, and with virtualization, that can be done on a mac. The rest need only one general purpose OS, and OS X is so simple to manage, has far less issues with compliance, is more stable over time, costs less to upgrade over time, and has far less expensive monitoring and management tools. Just eliminating the servers we have to support the windows desktops (including licensing and all) would save us more than $5m a year. Thats enough money that we could justify the $200 apple "tax" for all our 15K desktops, and still have another $150 per workstation to spare, not even including other operational savings.
@zelannii
It seems you are visibly upset.
@zelannii I've been happily using W7 since Beta build 7100 and no problems yet. The UI is smooth, unified, and much more organized to fit todays standards as well as being an OS that can accommodate so many different hardware configurations that it's a miracle it "just works". Just because Microsoft is releasing SP1 for 7 doesn't mean it's needed to make the OS functional, it's just improving an already awesome OS, and they're doing it for free! By the way the XP kernel was based on previous iterations of the NT kernel, Vista was the first breakaway and now that it's being refined it's even better than before!
@zelannii Actually I'm not Anti-Apple. As I own a few Apple products myself and enjoy them.
@Tes
Maybe you should do some reasearch before posting wildly inaccurate claims. I'd call the ability to have 3d acceleration over RDP a pretty big improvement, and more than 'almost nothing'. (It appears the tech is in both W7 SP1 and 2008 R2 SP1)
Check out Halo 2 over RDP:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/tonyso/archive/2010/07/13/remotefx-and-dynamic-memory-in-r2-sp1-beta-demo.aspx
@JerkyChew
I have no idea what you're talking about. Or are you claiming this Server specific RDP feature is coming to Windows 7 for the home user?
@Tes There's supposed to be a remoteFX RDP client in SP1 ( http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2010/03/18/explaining-microsoft-remotefx.aspx ). I'm hoping this provides means for new media center extenders and/or softsled!
Wasn't there something about RemoteFX too?
I'm sticking with Windoze ME. That has been the most reliable version out there, and it supports MS-DOS 6.0.
@Ruthless
I'm amazed you were able to type all that with out ME locking up.
@admlshake Yeah, I had to reboot my PC directly after adding my comment. I think my Netscape browser caused my Compuserve connection to blue screen the PC.
I'm not looking for Win7 SP1, i'm looking for Win 7 R2 dammit, including a backup solution that fracking WORKS (image backup D2D has been broken since Vista RTM, it only works to DVD, and a 40+GB image backup on DVD is not really manageable every 3 month).
Other things we'd really like to see? (many of which were promised for Vista and we still don't have):
- virtual desktops
- replacement for NTFS
- much more GUI customization
- a central control PANEL, not a bunch opf sub-panels
- unifying the GUI (too many control panels use different conventions, because they were developed by different departments, buttons are inconsistant, etc).
- some control over indexing other than on/off.
- Readyboost beyond 4GB
- Hybrid drive support
- EFI native, no more BIOS.
- Overhaul of Explorer (the file browse, not the web) and new features similar to Apple's Preview engine, integrated search in the window, and much better sorting/viewing controls, that get preserved when you close the window.
- replace task manager with ProcExplorer already. (you bought SysInternals years ago!)
M$ is already pushing rumors of Win 8, but yet we're still hesitating to go to Win7. Wonder why that is? YEa, we understand the rush to get past the Vista PR nightmare, but win 7 simply was not ready for prime time, and even with SP1 you;re not fixing the ISSUEs (only the bugs).
@zelannii
- virtual desktops - Virtualbox & Virtual PC are free, Why u want it bundled?
- replacement for NTFS - Why? Whats NTFS not doing for u?
- much more GUI customization - They let u ttweak! Isn't that effectively the same thing?
- a central control PANEL, not a bunch opf sub-panels - U MEAN GOD MODE? Its already in Win 7.
- unifying the GUI (too many control panels use different conventions, because they were developed by different departments, buttons are inconsistant, etc). - I'll give you that one if you're going where I think ur going...
- some control over indexing other than on/off. - Reg tweak, easy.
- Readyboost beyond 4GB - Why? Pointless with impending SSD's
- Hybrid drive support
- EFI native, no more BIOS. - Thats hardware not software. Windows is the OS.
- Overhaul of Explorer (the file browse, not the web) and new features similar to Apple's Preview engine, integrated search in the window, and much better sorting/viewing controls, that get preserved when you close the window. - Maybe a mode for that but most people like it the way it is
- replace task manager with ProcExplorer already. (you bought SysInternals years ago!) - task manager is made for a wide audience and if you weren't aware there are advanced modes for Task Manager. Very very advanced modes.
No sense in making Win 7 better with a Beta. Its already the best OS on the market. Prove me wrong!!!! Go on, I dare you .............
@guigsy well, this awful battery life is almost a deal-breaker for me - easily an 1hr difference just by upgrading. especially when they had that spheell about windows 7 having 20% more battery life for dvds.
and why does everyone keep praising windows 7 like this? vista was so disappointing that anything better is the best in the world? everyone is probably happy that 4gb of ram is the minimum in best buy these days cause of vista. i'm not impressed just because of the addition of libraries. and youtube locking up after a few videos.
Can anyone tell me what new features does the SP1 bring? Improved performance by any chance?
@max3000 i know the article was a lot of read, but i'll summarize it for you: there are no real changes, it's the same as doing all the windows updates and hotfixes.
I'll be waiting for the final release. sure wish they would have made the process of installing directly to iSCSI easier. maybe that is so in this release..
All fine and dandy, but does this update contain KB971033?
if not, fine.
if so, BARF!
quick, everyone go try it out on your personal computers. report back if it bricks your computer. thanks.