What Vista SP1 Means To You

An anonymous reader writes "Geek.com has an interview with Nick White, Microsoft's Vista Product Manager, covering the upcoming release of Vista SP1. The interview goes over some of the new features, how the change will affect admins, and how Microsoft decides if a change should be rolled out as an update or as part of the service pack. One of the most interesting questions asks whether people should feel that they have to wait until SP1 to upgrade to the operating system, a common practice with Windows users. White writes off this practice as no longer being necessary and notes how Windows Update has lessened the importance of the release of a service pack. Just the same, a News.com article explores the possibility that this update will finally begin driving users to Vista."

What Vista SP1 means to me

Vista SP1 means fresh material to pick on Microsoft for. So now, instead of having a year of the same old "Vista sucks and is failing" articles on Slashdot day after day, we'll have fresh new material like "Vista SP1 sucks and is failing."

Re:What Vista SP1 means to me

What it means to me is enough freelance support work that I'll be able to afford a new Mac. On the downside, it's the IT equivalent of working with raw sewage.

A message from raw sewage

On the downside, it's the IT equivalent of working with raw sewage.

We, the raw sewage community, take umbrage with that remark.

Poopyhead

M$... Windoze... M$... Windoze... [unsubstantiated blabber]... M$... Windoze [bad spelling]... M$... Windoze... [self-references]... M$... Windoze...

I used to know a guy on a campus social sciences mailing list that could not discuss Islam or Islamic society without using the term "islamofascist". Every single time. And all his references were to blog entries he had written, most of which were plain wrong or simple misrepresented facts. It gets old after a while, but more importantly it's the equivalent to using "poopyhead" when talking about someone you don't like. It's impossible to have conversations of any sort with people like that.

It's funny that you talk about Microsoft's credibility here, given that your slaughter of intelligent discourse also eliminates most of yours.

I like Slashdot but lately it's becoming more and more like Digg.

Re:Poopyhead

So what the AC said, although obviously correct, should be ignored because we don't have a name attached?

Re:What this means is that M$ is begging again.

I agree. I happened to buy a computer the first week Vista came out. I honestly didn't even realize it had come out. My old computer went bad and I needed a new one fast. I honestly can't see where all the gripes are. I leave it on all the time. It never crashes on me. It's only rebooted a couple of times because of certain updates it's gotten that required it (I know I know, why should an update require a reboot blah blah blah). It's really run like a dream. I don't have particularly fast hardware. It wasn't an expensive computer. I got it for $750 at Staples. I've never noticed a slow down because of aero. I run as a standard user and not as admin and the only time I get prompted for UAC is when I install something or I make system changes which is as it should be. (I had an issue with an HP program that assumed running as admin to check for updated drivers every day. Luckily that program was finally updated and so is no longer an issue.)

I mean honestly, what is the big problem? I keep reading articles and comments talking about how crappy Vista is and I just shake my head and say I don't get it. I don't know. I guess prejudices are hard to give up.

Re:What this means is that M$ is begging again.

Install Vista on a laptop. Then try:

1. saving a wireless connection with no SSID;
2. hibernating;
3. coming back from hibernation;
4. re-establishing a wireless connection AFTER coming back from hibernation (assuming you managed to get that far);
5. checking your battery consumption
6. ???

and then tell me there's nothing to complain about.

Re:What this means is that M$ is begging again.

Ick! XP is ugly and feels slow compared to Vista. There are so many little things you pick up, like there is finally an easy way to see the full path to running processes, once you try to support people using XP you just get frustrated! Vista is a huge improvement over XP.

That doesn't mean there aren't bugs. Their new TCP/IP stack has all kinds of bugs. There is a bug (and I'm too lazy to find the KB on it) that fucks up how it sends ACK's to other devices. As it turns out, it will hang the MediaMVP in my bedroom. Some vendors software gets buggy too - Vista changed a lot of the API for explorer (the file one, dammit!) that seems to crash TortiseSVN every now and then (though explorer.exe is the one that does the crashing...)

Given a little more time to mature, I suspect many people will look at this like XP vs 3.1. They really just look and act that much different.

Re:Amazing.

Let me know nine months from now if Vista can actually do anything for you that XP, Mac or gnu/linux could not do faster

My mother-in-law is a very unknowledgeable user. I bought her a computer a week after I bought mine and I set it up with Vista (came with XP but Vista had just been released so I got a free upgrade). My mother-in-law's biggest problem has always been her kids coming home to visit and downloading or installing crap. It's always been a challenge to lock her XP down. With Vista it's a piece of cake. She runs as a standard user and since she isn't a power user, she rarely has to be bothered by UAC. When she is, it's no big deal to enter the admin password. Now when I go to visit I don't have to spend hours cleaning off viruses and spyware. It all just works. She's never had an issue and I never have to fix something using the VNC server I installed on it like I used to with her XP.

As for faster, it really doesn't have a speed problem. I've never noticed any speed issue and that's with Aero running. It's an HP that I paid $650 for and it included a monitor. Not exactly high-end hardware.

Value proposition

So, with the service pack you're finally getting a stable product? Where's the value for all the money you're laying out? Pay hundreds of dollars, put up with anal probe product activation and wait almost a year for what you should have gotten in the first place.

I'm sure that makes sense on some planet...just not this one.

Re:

if they didn't fix bugs you would whine. they are fixing them, and you whine. Does no distro of linux have any bugs right now?
welcome to slashdot I guess *sigh*

Waiting for the SP

Mr. White's assertions aside, IMHO, MS is releasing this service pack as early as possible to entice people into believing Vista is "ready". The practice in the industry to wait for the first few updates is to firmly entrenched for them to simply "write it off".

And in my experience, lest my FOSS bias shine through, the idea of waiting for the first few updates goes for most software, not just Windows or other MS software.

BitLocker quote from article

From TFA:

"If you're an administrator, then you definitely have a lot more to look forward to when it comes to SP1. One thing that caught my eye was the additional ability in BitLocker to encrypt extra local volumes. Many enterprises still partition their workstations and laptops into a C and D drive. Since users are usually instructed to use the D drive to store their data, this means data was at risk if the enterprise also used BitLocker as a security measure, since D couldn't be previously encrypted."

Wait. Only C: could be locked? Full of fail.

Bloat?

Wow, I didn't know you could remove bloat with a Service Pack.

It means "XP" to me

I'll tell you what it means to me - Windows XP 64-bit. I "upgraded" to Vista early in the summer, and I kept telling myself through all the headaches that I'd just wait it out until SP1. Now that that's not until next year, I've decided I'm no longer waiting. Instead, I'm switching to XP 64-bit, which appears to have a lot more driver support than the last time I tried it. There's no way I'm going to wait until Q1 2008 for a service pack that might fix my issues, especially if, according to Microsoft, service packs are less important now that Windows Update is widely used.

To me, a Slashdot reader...

it means that we will have a flood of articles about Vista SP1, just like the initial flood of Vista articles. Seeing as there's now 2 articles already inside an hour.... I shudder to think how many we will see until March 2008.. or whenever SP1 comes out.

What can someone be xpected to say about a mere Statement of Intent from Microsoft, about a Service Pack.... which right thinking people would expect a big comapny to release RIGJHT NOW and solve teething troubles faced by Vista users daily?

The schedule for SP1 indicates MS is under zero pressure to deliver anything or do anything innovative. No point fantasizing about it.

one step closer to ...

Vista SP1 will be one step closer to a Windows that's as good as Mac OS X.

Just like Windows eventually caught up to Mac with Windows95 and then exceeded it with Windows 2000, Microsoft will once again catch up to Mac OS X with an eventual improved version of Vista that looks and feels as good.

When that time comes Apple faithful will rant "Mac's had that for 5 years!" and it won't matter anymore. Apple had better get innovating the next major killer features fast, because Microsoft is always improving.

huh?

One of the most interesting questions asks if whether people should feel like that have to wait until SP1 to upgrade to the operating system, a common practice with Windows users

Who wrote that sentence? Miss South Carolina?

Driving?

You know something's wrong when you're talking about driving people to use software rather than attracting them to it.

Re-installed Ubuntu instead. My Vista problems:

I read this with a twinge of curiosity. Vista Home Ultimate came on the new Dell system I received a couple months ago. While the novelty of Vista's graphical enhancements wore off quickly, my irritation at a litany of Vista bugs did not. They include:

  - Two year old Netgear 802.11g wireless card being virtually impossible to install
  - Crackling, popping audio in World of Warcraft (and other games) from the built in audio that defied repeated attempts to fix via driver upgrades
  --- Disabled said audio in BIOS, inserted Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 digital PCI card. Guess what? VISTA INCOMPATIBLE. Creative. THE standard. in.com.patible with Vista's DRM-heavy digital device list. Back to crackling, popping on board audio. So annoying I resorted to playing WoW with no sound.
  - ATI HDTv Wonder PCI card installation - wasted time. Windows Media Center could not tune ANYTHING with any degree of quality when the same card + antenna did brilliantly on my old Win XP box. Furthermore, exhaustive forum searching reveals that Media Center actually cripples the driver for the HD tuner, making it so that you can tune OTA content, OR CATV content, but NOT BOTH. You have to install a hacked up driver from some shady 3rd party website to use the full functionality of your TV card. Again, the ATI product does not appear on Microsoft's DRM-heavy "approved digital device" list.
  - On board gigabit ethernet adapter's network configuration would randomly disappear and have to be reconfigured when the computer was hard rebooted for any reason, including power outages, or video lockups, leading us to..
  - NVidia GForce 7300 PCI Express card included with machine worked flawlessly as delivered, BUT after Microsofts last "patch Tuesday" a few weeks ago, the video would not 'wake up' after the machine had been put to sleep. The "sleep mode" suspend worked great until the last security patch.. It makes no sense to me either. After the patch, the video would not wake with the rest of the system, forcing a hard poweroff/restart, causing the network setting to disappear.. HALF the time.
  -

  So, two nights ago, after backing up, I took my freshly burned Ubuntu 7.04 cd, took a deep breath, and installed. I can get around in Linux, but I am by no means an expert. My installation was smooth. In less than 90 minutes, using Automatix, I had every plugin, driver, and application I could ever want to make my system perform properly. Nvidia OpenGL driver automatically configured, all video/flash plugins for Firefox, DVD playback, the whole 9 yards. Additionally, using the step-by step copy and paste instructions from the ubuntu website, I had Wine installed, and had configured it properly to run World of Warcraft.

    So here I sit. World of Warcraft runs smoothly. Audio is CRYSTAL CLEAR, my Soundblaster Live 5.1 card is supported, no popping, clicking audio. I play the game at 1680x1050 with almost all detail settings turned on at a very smooth framerate. I visit CNN.com and view all embedded video seamlessly, no plugin errors or other irritants. When I need to type papers for college, I have OpenOffice. Ipod works flawlessly with podcast management program.

Why do I need Vista again?

------

Make World of Warcraft work flawlessy in Ubuntu with Wine:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft [ubuntu.com]

PC World's noob-friendly "Seven Post-Install Tips for Unbuntu 7.04" :
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130923-page,1-c, linux/article.html [pcworld.com]

Re:

Didn't I just read in the Slashdot Vista news earlier "The service pack is said to improve performance and stability, not to add features."

Yes, very misleading. Performance and stability are the new features.

Re:From TFA:

New features, my shiny pink ass. I want an operating system that runs Sonar and Premiere and Eve-Online, and runs them fast and with little hassle. I want an operating system that doesn't snoop on me or limit my ability to manipulate the data on my machine in any way I desire. I want an operating system that doesn't pretend to know what's good for me better than I do myself, and I want an operating system that uses my computing resources efficiently.

In other words, I either want an updated XP Pro or OSX that will run on my own sweet hardware.

In regards to Microsoft's "commitment to Service Pack 3", I've got a sick feeling that XP SP3 is going to try to basically bolt on most of the horrible shit in Vista onto my XP system. Microsoft's clearly pissed that we haven't embraced their wonderful new OS and they're going to try to shove it down our throats.

I think what I really want is a third professional, commercial operating system that will run my software and light a fire under MS and Apple, perhaps convincing them that it's worthwhile to actually consider what their customers want. Their ability to make fat profits while ignoring customer satisfaction is not the way the "free market system" is supposed to work, and it speaks volumes about the disdain corporate America has for the rest of us.

I make a living using software that runs on XP Pro. But I am so sick of having companies like Microsoft disregard the desires of "the market" and act like the monopoly they are that not using Vista has become as much a political act than it is a consumer decision.

Re:ROFL

Sorry, but I just don't buy it. People don't switch to Vista because of:

1) hardware compatibility issues,
2) software compatibility issues, and
3) annoyances such as UAC, which negatively impact hinder the user experience (though, I do understand their utility).

In a corporate setting, the first two are, without question, show stoppers, and the last is a burden for support staff. Further, XP *works* for most people, so there's little reason to switch. A service pack for Vista does nothing to address these issues (nor could it).

Re:What Vista SP1 Means to You

People that have been using Windows have been pretty happy with XP and Win2000. Surprising numbers of casual users still have '98. And increasing numbers of us are using something else entirely =)

In round numbers, this is how the world looks to the web developer:

Win XP 75%
Unchanged since September 06

W2K 6%
Down 5% since September 06.
W2K had little mass market exposure.

Vista 4%
Up from 0% in January 07
It should be interesting to see how Vista fares in Back-To-School and Christmas sales. You will be much less of the warmed-over XP box and much more of the DX10 system realistically spec'd for Vista. To speak of Vista's "failure" in the marketplace is desperately premature, if not inane.

OSX 4%
Unchanged since January 05

Linux 3%
Unchanged since November 03
However, the w3Schools stats suggest that Linux may be losing ground to the Mac and OSX.

W98 1%
Unchanged since August 06 OS Platform Statistics [w3schools.com]

No, you can talk about Vista's failure.

To speak of Vista's "failure" in the marketplace is desperately premature, if not inane.

A new OS or fork that fails to gain more than 4% of the user base in 9 months could only be considered a success in Redmond. We have already been through a Christmas and back to school sale. Why should next year be any different? M$ still thinks xbox and zune are competitive, so what do I know?

If you want to talk about desperate, think about M$'s position. Release a brand new OS and a brand new Office suit and then see no difference to your bottom line. See banks, airlines, hardware stores and others deploy rival software, "where it counts". See vendors sell the same rival software. Their software is buggy because they opted for the great content lockdown instead of taking care of things that mattered.