February 5th, 2008
Vista SP1 highlights in 60 seconds - The reasons why I'll be applying the service pack
So, yesterday Microsoft announced that SP1 for Vista had gone RTM. This means that the first service pack for Windows Vista has been finalized and this is what we’ll have to live with until we see SP2. I’ve been plowing through the masses of SP1 related documentation to come out of Redmond and come up with a shortlist of reasons why I’ll be applying SP1 as soon as I get my hands on the code.
A good source of SP1 related information is the Notable changes in Windows Vista SP1 document which Microsoft released yesterday (available as PDF and XPS formats). I’ve worked through the 55 pages of this document and here is a shortlist of reasons why I’ll be upgrading to SP1.
- Support for creating a single DVD media that boots on PCs with either BIOS or EFI - small point but very useful.
- Addressing of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting - Improved stability for all!
- Improved the speed of adding and extracting files to and from a zipped folder - While I use 7-Zip a lot, the in-built support for ZIP is useful.
- New compression algorithm for RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) reduces network bandwidth by as much as 25-60% - I remote desktop to several system simultaneously so this will be appreciated.
- Hotpatching reduced the number of reboots when updating - it’ll be interesting to see how this works out.
- SP1 will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS on 32-bit systems - an end to the “where did my RAM go” cries!
Now I’m just hoping that SP1 doesn’t have any nasty undocumented side-effects!
Hopefully all that took you no more than 60 seconds to read! ;-)
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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