Microsoft released two fix packs for Vista, one is supposed to improve its performance and the other one its compatibility. The list of bug fixes doesn’t look so spectacular at first glance. However, if you are suffering from one of these issues, these updates might be quite helpful.

Actually, I experienced one of the problems described in the performance update. Some days ago, I tried to copy a large file, I think it had about 3 GB, from my Vista desktop to a network share on a Windows Server 2003 machine. As usual, Vista started to calculate the estimated time remaining, but somehow it wasn’t able to handle this arithmetical problem. I had to cancel the copy process.

Some of my colleagues told me about other performance problems with Vista. They all have relatively new computers with more than 2 GB RAM. They are ally saying that Vista sometimes completely hangs. Occasionally, the foreground application would even display a white window.

Except for the issue with the huge file described above, I never had performance problems with Vista. I have been working with it on five PCs with different memory capacity (1-3 GB). Many things seem to be faster than with XP, for example accessing network shares. So I suppose that the reports about Vista performance problems are often related to bugs, driver issues or Vista incompatible applications.

It seems that these rumors about Vista’s bad performance piled up in the last weeks. Thus, Microsoft was forced to release these updates before service pack 1 comes out. In a way these fix packs could be considered as SP 0.5. Even if you don’t experience any performance problems now, it might make sense to install them. Some of the issues only become apparent under certain circumstances. If you still feel that your Vista PC is too slow, you might try some of these tips to speed up Vista.

Via Windows Now