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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.
The future of Windows service packs
- In future Windows service packs, Microsoft will focus on the improvement of experiences (compatibility, performance, fixes, etc.)
- There will be very small functional changes.
- The risk of breaking applications will be reduced [like with Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1].
- Updates via Windows Update will be more frequent and will contain more enhancements (drivers, compatibility updates).
Vista SP1 news
- A public release candidate of Vista SP1 will be available by the end of the year.
- At Vista’s launch there were 250 logoed applications, and 10,000 logoed devices; there are 2,000 logoed apps and 700,000 logoed devices now.
- Bitlocker gets a new user interface.
- The search item in the Start menu is removed [because of the Google complaints], but it can be still accessed by F3 or WinKey + F
- Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 are aligned: they have the same kernel/code base and they will be released together.
- Even though Vista gets a new kernel with SP1, there will be no compatibility issues. [That remains to be seen yet].
Deploying Vista SP1
- Even though Vista supports drag-and-drop slipstreaming (offline updates) of service packs, it isn’t supported for SP1. [However, there are ways for slipstreaming Vista, anyhow.]
- The size of SP1 that will be delivered thru Automatic Update will be between 51-55 MB.
- The size of the standalone installer which includes all 36 languages will be about 1 GB for the x86 version.
- Vista SP1 Beta1 requires three reboots because three perquisites have to be installed first. Since these prerequisites will be delivered via Windows Update soon, this won’t be necessary for the final SP1. [However, if you don't use Automatic Updates, these three reboots might still be needed.]
Ha! I don’t know about you, Mike, but I’ve been on Ubuntu for a few weeks now, and I will NEVER go back to Windows even if they pay me. Ok, fine…maybe if they pay me…I’ll think about that. But Ubuntu will outlive Windows a year or two from now no matter how many SPs they produce.
I heard this recommendation for Linux as a desktop OS already for so many years. So I hope you can forgive me if I am a bit suspicious about Ubuntu, too. When I heard that Dell is selling desktops with preinstalled Ubuntu I got curious, though. So it is already on my to-do-list to check it out.
I run both vista and ubuntu
vista I need for certain things, ubuntu for others
Michael – I was reading this post and was curious about something you said. You said “the
search item in the Start Menu will be removed”. You aren’t talking about the Sart Search data entry field righ above the Start button are you? That’s one of the only things that makes Vista usable! If you can’t figure out where MS hid a function – just start typing! Just wantd to be sure I understood which Search you are referring to.
Lori, the start search prompt is still available in SP1. Only the “Search” link under Games will be gone.