Robert McLaws ran a performance test with the refresh of Vista SP1 RC which I blogged about yesterday. He compared the performance with a patched Vista RTM using PCMark Vantage. This benchmarking program leverages specific Windows features such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, etc.). McLaws ran this benchmark on systems with Vista x86 and Vista x64. The results are quite interesting.

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The new release of Service Pack 1 for Vista that has been available for some days already for the more privileged beta testers can now be downloaded via Windows Update. As usual, you have to download a script first. It adds some registry keys which will make SP1 visible at Windows Update. Note that you have to uninstall prior versions of this SP. Also note that you will have to do the same when the final of Service Pack 1 comes out.

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Microsoft finally offers SP1 RC for Vista as a public download. You can download it as standalone package or via Windows Update. It seems as if Microsoft just published that little trick that could be found on some blogs for some days now. Supposedly, this was just the way, the more privileged beta testers used to get this download. It changes some registry keys which lets Windows Update recognize if your computer is a valid target for this service pack.

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Microsoft released a couple of white papers that discuss in detail Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. I just skimmed over those five documents. Not all of them are really worth reading. In this post, you’ll find a brief comment to each white paper. There is one paper that includes some revealing information.

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It seems as if Microsoft is making progress with Service Pack 1 for Vista. Technet and MSDN subscribers can download it now. According to Computerworld, it will be available next week. But just like before with SP1 Beta, there is also a little hack that allows you do download it right from Windows Update. Since it is a release candidate it might make sense to check it out to see if the problems you had with Vista are solved now.

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Update: RSAT is ready for download.

The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) Beta is now available for participants of the Windows Beta program. This tool set will replace the famous Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack aka Adminpak. It allows you to remotely manage a Windows server without logging on via RDP.

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Some days ago I blogged about a questionable performance test of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. The same organizations just tested the performance of Windows XP SP3. The “Researchers” wrote that they measured a “performance boost” of, well, 10%.

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The exo.performance.network tested Vista with the beta of service pack 1. Many organizations are waiting for SP1 in the hope that it will solve all the problems they had with Vista. One issue that is often discussed in this context is performance. To come straight to the point: According to their test result Vista SP1 is not faster than Vista RTM.

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Since Vista has been available for about a year now, more and more journalists are trying to figure out if Vista is a success or not. Today, I read a couple of interesting articles about Vista’s adoption pace.

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It seems that Microsoft is really struggling with Vista. This is already the fourth update of this kind. There was a compatibility and reliability update in August accompanied by a performance update. And then there was another compatibility, reliability and stability update at the beginning of this month. The description of this new one is the same as for the last update.

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The Ghacks blog has a nice hack which allows you to download and install Vista SP1 via Windows Update. Essentially, one has to run a little batch file which adds two registry keys.

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It is only two months since Microsoft released two performance, compatibility and reliability updates for Windows Vista. Now, there is again a similar update. Some of the improvements were expected to be released with Vista SP1 only. Microsoft seems nervous to me, presumably because of the many complaints and the plunging retail sales.

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Paul Thurrott has some interesting new information about Vista SP1. He interviewed Dave Zipkin, Windows Client product manager, about its new features and also about Microsoft’s rethinking concerning the future role of Windows service packs. Most of the article is about what Zipkin said, and since product managers tend to repeat themselves quite frequently it became a little too longwinded. In this post, I summarized the interesting insights of Thurrott’s article. I will focus on those new features of Vista SP1 which I didn’t discuss before on 4sysops.

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12,000 private testers received Vista SP1. Although there is much stir in the blogosphere and on the news sites about it, I must admit it isn’t really that exciting since there are no revolutionary new features. More interesting is an interview at Channel9 with Mike Nash, corporate vice president in charge of Windows client operating systems product management. His interviewer, who is also a Microsoft employee, was cheeky enough to ask if Vista is a failure.

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You probably know that Microsoft had to change Vista’s desktop search because of Google’s complaints. There is already some technical documentation about the changes available even though there is no public beta of service pack 1 yet.

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