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Vista Service Pack One Almost Here 286

Posted by Zonk from the like-a-really-lame-christmas dept.
arogier writes "After numerous delays and an actual release reversal, the official release date for Vista service pack one has been set for Tuesday, March 18th on Windows Update and Microsoft Downloads. It will be released as an automatic update on April 18th. 'It's unclear so far how a February snafu will affect SP1's roll-out. Last month, after Microsoft pushed a pair of prerequisite patches to users, some reported that their machines refused to finish installing one of the fixes, then went into an endless series of reboots. Several days later, Microsoft pulled the update from automatic delivery, said it was working on a solution and promised it would "make the update available again shortly after we address the issue."' It would be a good time for those planning to adopt early to perform requisite backups and locate their restore media."
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Vista Service Pack One Almost Here More

Vista Service Pack One Almost Here

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  • I got the, er, "early adopter" version. (Score:5, Funny)

    by arrenlex ( 994824 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @02:47AM (#22770882)
    Great news, but it doesn't matter to me anymore. I already pirated it from bittorrent. Read that again. I was so desperate to make it work I had to STEAL FIXES for an operating system I LEGALLY BOUGHT. Says a lot about Vista, doesn't it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by idiotwithastick ( 1036612 )
      Seriously, they sure took their time didn't they? I might have thought that with the poor reception of Vista they would be quick to push service packs, but apparently something held them up, even some quick fixes would be nice (though at least they still have updates coming through Windows Update). Personally though I'm scared to pirate it from BitTorrent, not because of viruses but I'm afraid it will break compatibility with stuff; one patch earlier this year prevented me from booting into Windows, and it

      • Updates? Ha! (Score:4, Informative)

        by camperdave ( 969942 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @07:03AM (#22771934) Journal
        though at least they still have updates coming through Windows Update

        I applied one of the updates (KB944533) and it killed http. Internet explorer would not open up web pages, but would give the "server could not be reached" error. I was able to ping just fine, and I could reach the page from another computer on the same network. The kicker was that the patch not only knocked out IE, but Firefox as well. Things worked fine after uninstalling the patch. Of course, the patch got re-installed the very next day.

        Yesterday I decided to install some more patches, hoping that they would remedy the bug in KB944533. Nope! In fact, the DHCP client stopped working. I could no longer get anything but APIPA addresses. I uninstalled those patches, hoping to recover, but no dice. I decided to roll back the machine about two weeks, and now it blue screens.

        Now Microsoft isn't the only culprit. A language pack update in Ubuntu is killing a number of my KDE apps (k3b in particular). So I have two machines that I have to run unpatched operating systems on, because patching them causes them to not work. At least I have a choice to ignore the patch with Ubuntu. Windows applies the patches without asking.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MBC1977 ( 978793 )
          May I suggest turning off the automatic update feature? This way you can update Windows as you choose.

          • This way you can update Windows as you choose.

            Sadly, Vista won't run Windows Update for me. And Microsoft could not get it to work, either.
            I'm sticking with XP until I have enough coins saved up for a Macbook Pro.

        • Re:Updates? Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

          by plague3106 ( 71849 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @08:41AM (#22772622)
          The common component to all those failures is you.

        • Re:Updates? Ha! (Score:4, Informative)

          by Blkdeath ( 530393 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @12:47PM (#22775178) Homepage

          I applied one of the updates (KB944533) and it killed http. Internet explorer would not open up web pages, but would give the "server could not be reached" error. I was able to ping just fine, and I could reach the page from another computer on the same network. The kicker was that the patch not only knocked out IE, but Firefox as well. Things worked fine after uninstalling the patch. Of course, the patch got re-installed the very next day.

          On our small company LAN I encountered a similar problem but with a stock install of Vista on about 3 newly purchased laptops. The problem turned out to be the fact that our LAN uses a firewall/router and connects to ADSL which requires a lower MTU, and Vista has the MTU fixed at 1500. Lowering it to 1492 (manually - via the command line no less!) on the laptops made the difference.

          Now, we could browse some sites but not others. The amazing thing was most of the Microsoft sites (like msn.com, Hotmail, etc.) wouldn't work but competing services would. Strange brew. :)

  • Awesome!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by moogied ( 1175879 )
    Service Pack One is almost ready for release!! That makes it what, three more packs before its ready for release?? Not sure..

  • Moment of truth... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FoolsGold ( 1139759 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @02:48AM (#22770890)
    Now to see how many "I'll wait for SP1 before moving to Vista" people actually follow through.

    • Re:Moment of truth... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sheen ( 1180801 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @03:17AM (#22771014)
      I am probably the only one on slashdot who uses Vista AND likes it. I have had exactly 1 issue with vista since I got it in Jan. 2007, that was a missing driver, which appeared on vendor site Feb. 2007 (webcam). So personally I can't see why everyone is slamming it so much. I will never go back to XP. ( this is not ment as a troll post, im just saying what i think of it.)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 )
        I don't have any issues with Vista. It and other programs crash just as often in Vista as they did in XP. But my problem with Vista is not that it has issues, its that I have to completely overhaul my workflow which I've been using since Windows 95 (and improved it ever since). A simple example is the new explorer thing. It no longer has a drop down box with all the parent directories, it shows some kind of history. Backspace no longer goes to the parent directory. In fact, there isn't even an "up" button,

        • It's faster (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Toreo asesino ( 951231 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @03:51AM (#22771120) Journal
          Having bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on that's lower spec than my work machine (policy is to update desktops later this year), my laptop almost always feels far more responsive.

          Plus, there's other unsung stuff in Vista i've not seen in any OS - the problem solutions centre (not sure exactly how to translate into English); when I got it I had my one and only BSOD in Vista. Shocked, I rebooted and as soon as I was back to the desktop Windows pops up a message saying "I see something real bad happened; do you mind if I see if there's a solution online?". Click Yes, comes back saying "Ah I crashed because of this driver; there's a update to it here which will fix the problem". It's never happened since.

          So yeah, there's reasons Vista is better. UAC is top too; I like to know when a program is gonna try and change my system (some try that you'd never think would - denied).

          It's an upgrade without a doubt. I wouldn't pay specifically to upgrade mind you, but I appreciate the changes as they come anyway.

          • Re:It's faster (Score:4, Insightful)

            by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @04:09AM (#22771178) Homepage
            I'm using Vista on a brand new Dell XPS. But the problem solution center didn't help me in any case. I had 3 BSODs so far (since mid Januari 2008), and the solution center thingy never gave a usable information. So I've stopped using that thing.

            As for UAC, I've put that into silent mode because it annoyed the hell out of me. I know it's meant to be obstructive. But I need to use a couple of legacy applications. The UAC blackout thingy actually wrecks havoc with multi screen setups and DirectDraw applications. Or at least, it did for me. It would have been nice if it didn't nag me every time I started an application which I pre-configured to be run in administrative mode. That would at least solve some of the problems I have with UAC.
            • If it's the 1530, goto the dell site and get the latest everything except wireless; specifically the chipset drivers - which you'll want direct from Intel (install only the driver, not the other thing too).

              Also, it really helps putting the drives in SATA mode, not HCPI mode.

              Oh, and SP1 too :)

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by totally bogus dude ( 1040246 )

            XP has something similar to the "problem solutions centre" as well. Like the other respondent, it usually doesn't have anything relevant, and just gives you a generic message like "such and such a driver crashed, go to the vendor's site and see if there's a newer one". I think it comes up as an option in the error reporting wizard, if you choose to send the error report.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jaruzel ( 804522 )
            I LIKE the UAC. There, I've said it. Feel free to stone me. ;)

            Seriously tho, it's a good sanity check. I tend to use all the tools for Active Directory quite a lot, and having the UAC pop up, reminds me that I'm about to do something potentially dangerous.

            -Jar

          • Having bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on that's lower spec than my work machine (policy is to update desktops later this year), my laptop almost always feels far more responsive.

            Most likely, your old machine had accumulated crap over time, and resinstalling XP would have given an even larger speedup. Vista is far less responsive on my Thinkpad X61s than XP was on my Thinkpad X40, comparing them side by side. Only the cpu bound tasks like compiling are faster, due to the faster hardware.

            "I see something real bad happened; do you mind if I see if there's a solution online?".

            Yeah, whenever my own programs crash I get that one. It doesn't find any solutions though, I still have to debug my own code.

            It did once claim to have found a solution to system crash, pointing

            • Re:Vista is much slower (Score:5, Informative)

              by Toreo asesino ( 951231 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @07:05AM (#22771962) Journal

              Most likely, your old machine had accumulated crap over time, and resinstalling XP would have given an even larger speedup.
              Most likely it's stuff like SuperFetch in Vista doing what it's designed to do in fact. For once I've got an OS that's gonna use the memory i bought with the machine. That's what it's designed for, and it does it very well. FireFox opens faster than IE6 does in any XP machine; fresh or otherwise. Believe me, Vista is faster if you have the memory.
              And all the palava about Areo grinding systems down is rubbish too; it's all 3d accelerated (read: using hardware features otherwise doing nowt), so that too has no effect of performance. Feels very snappy in fact, especially with SP1 which i've been running for a couple of weeks now - it's the Vista that should've shipped.
              There are some things i don't like about Vista of course; the dumbed down explorer for one, and the higher memory requirements for another, but it does load stuff faster than XP, no doubt.

        • Re:Moment of truth... (Score:5, Informative)

          by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @06:10AM (#22771708)
          A simple example is the new explorer thing. It no longer has a drop down box with all the parent directories, it shows some kind of history.

          This is one of those things that you really have to spend time with and adust too, because in actual fact, Vista really improved on this.

          If you click on the 'location bar' or whatever its called, it shows you the current path, eg. c:\users\documents\whatver... and has a history drop down of the last several folders. I agree this is sort of lame. There is also a back/forward button which behaves as it would in a browser; and the back/forward buttons aren't all that bad.

          But the real magic is when you have a folder/file in one of the lower panes (left or right) selected, then the location bar displayes a sort of breadcrumb view.
          eg: [myname] > documents > whatever >

          clicking on the myname / documents / whatever will take you directly to that folder. So that's our up button. Not only is there a button that goes 'up one level', but you can also usually go up 2 or 3 or more levels directly.

          On top of that clicking on the '>' bring drop down lists of the folders within that folder... so if I'm in 'whatever', and I click the '>' next to 'myname' I get a list of the subfolders of myname... so without leaving where I am, with 2 clicks I can navigate directly to an 'uncle folder' (alternate child of the parent of the parent). You gotta admit that's pretty slick.

          So we've got easy navigation up one, two, three, or even more levels, as well as directly into the children of any those levels.

          Backspace no longer goes to the parent directory.

          Its now: alt-uparrow

          That's not so bad.

          Frankly, compared to most file explorers I've used including Mac OSX's finder and Windows XP, Vista's is pretty good - once you take the time to learn its quirks and shortcuts.

          it doesn't allow be to customize the layout and remove all useless elements. Like the favorite folders, I don't need it, just show be the directory tree.

          Under [username]/favorites/links you can easily customize / remove any links you find useless, or replace them with ones you'd find useful (as I've done). Unfortunately if you remove all of them its not smart enough to suppress the section entirely; I imagine there's a registry hack for that, but really, in my case a link to documents, desktop, and a couple project folders is actually pretty useful are actually really useful, so I'm actually glad to have them there. And I got rid of the searches, music, and pictures crud.

          I also needed to hack the registry just so that explorer will keep using list view for all explorer windows (dumb directory profiles).

          Actually, there is a checkbox under Tools -> Folder Options -> Remember Each Folders View Settings

          If you uncheck that, it pretty much disables the 'directory profiles' you are talking about, if I understood you right. You shouldn't need to 'hack the registry'.

          But it all boils down to a single question: why would you exchange your XP for Vista?
          So far I haven't found anything.

          I think for most people that's a fair assessment. But when you buy new hardware, unless there is a specific compatibility reason to get XP I'd recommend vista over xp nearly any day.

        • You really haven't spent 10 seconds on Vista, have you?

          It no longer has a drop down box with all the parent directories, it shows some kind of history.

          That's all XP did as well; nevermind that you can click those breadcrumbs and pretty easily move around. This has been a great improvement over the text box (which you can still easily get to).

          Backspace no longer goes to the parent directory.

          Yes, it does.

          In fact, there isn't even an "up" button, just a "back" button.

          Which is easily solved by the fact you can

      • No there's plenty (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
        I've been using Vista 64-bit since not long after it was released and I'm quite satisfied (I'd have moved back to XP if I wasn't).

        The reason people slam it so much here is because they badly want it to fail. It is predominantly FUD.

        The echo chamber effect is a big reason you hear so much. Someone has a bad experience with Vista, or perhaps just makes one up, and writes/talks about it. Thsi then gets repeated by people who hate MS and want to see Vista do poorly. You discover that these people have never act

        • Re:No there's plenty (Score:5, Informative)

          by penix1 ( 722987 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @05:43AM (#22771618) Homepage

          Of the people I know that have mostly bad things to say about Vista, I'd say at least 90% have never actually used it. They "Read about it somewhere," or "Some guy they know told them," and so on. They have no experience with it, other than perhaps having seen it on a computer. They are simply repeating stories. Of those that have used it and dislike it, almost all of them actually have an issue with something else, that they are blaming on Vista. For example a coworker was pissed because his DJ hardware/software combo didn't work. Ok, well check compatibility first, and that isn't a Vista issue. It doesn't support Linux either.


          I'll ignore the fact that you are doing exactly what you accuse others by repeating hearsay and address the "it doesn't work on Linux either" remark. That would be valid if it ever did in the first place which it didn't. Let's compare apples to apples here. Vista's main competition isn't Linux or OS X even. It is XP. In that context, the program does work in XP and not in vista. It sure is a Vista issue. Say what you like, but that sounds like a Vista sale lost if that is the driving factor for switching for that user.

          Another problem is people who try to run it on insufficient hardware. This happens with basically every Windows release that I can remember. I remember all the complaints that Windows 95 didn't run well on 4MB of RAM, even though that was the minimum. The response was, of course, yes that's the MINIMUM, not the "gets good performance" amount. Same deal with Vista, people have old systems with insufficient hardware, particularly RAM (since not that long ago RAM was real pricey). They install Vista and find it doesn't perform well, and thus get angry.


          Umm....No! They were SOLD on the fact that the NEW machine they bought was "Vista capable" from the get-go when it wasn't. Hence the class action lawsuit. Bait and switch is still illegal in the US at least until the Microsoft lobbyists pay off, er, "contribute to" Congress to change it. There is a big difference between buying a new machine based on the word of the supplier that it will work fine with the new OS and buying an upgrade where it is anybody's guess. That is the difference here.

        • Re:No there's plenty (Score:5, Informative)

          by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @06:01AM (#22771680) Journal
          "The reason people slam it so much here is because they badly want it to fail. It is predominantly FUD."

          Sorry, that's not quite right. I have a negative view about Vista because, having had to install it on a laptop so I can support some of my user base that have Vista, I have had:

          1) The laptop screen saver not waking up *sometimes* and so I have to toggle the laptop in and out of standby to carry on working.
          2) A wifi driver that blue screens *sometimes* on resuming from standby so if 1) happens I may lose my work in progress.
          3) A damn stupid box that pops up every time I run notepad++ warning me about the program.
          4) Mysterious periods of disk thrashing.
          5) Mysterious periods of wifi not connecting.
          6) A need to buy 1GB more RAM to make the thing stop plodding.
          7) RDP sessions mysteriously failing and needing a registry key deleted to get things going again

          Now, I am sure some of these things are fixable with some tweaking or with some patching, and perhaps the wifi issue is down to the chipset company, but the number of hoops my users I have had to go through to make simple things work is extraordinary and timewasting. Unlike XP (or 2000 or NT), rarely has Vista been an 'out of the box' solution to a new install.

          I am very pragmatic when it comes to Vista, but quite simply if you put identical machines running Vista and XP side by side (OK, let's give Vista some more RAM to start) and use them both for a short while, my money's on Vista being more of a PITA to use and less easy to navigate: things that took a few clicks to get to are now buried and we have had to wait for revised or new beta versions of some apps just to get some things going. Some users were on Office 2002 - but Outlook has problems with that so we have had to pay to upgrade some, while others have been moved to a Scalix pilot system.

          Sure, Vista is not a train wreck, but it's a bloody big detour on the road to efficient computing with many rough edges and a cost loading. I know it will get better over time, but when it hit the ground running it was still getting dressed and keeps tripping over its pants.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • 1) The laptop screen saver not waking up *sometimes* and so I have to toggle the laptop in and out of standby to carry on working.

            This was fixed in an update, and I think there is also a fix for it in SP1, at least I am pretty sure there was one in the RC that was released back before Christmas

            2) A wifi driver that blue screens *sometimes* on resuming from standby so if 1) happens I may lose my work in progress.

            Update your drivers

            3) A damn stupid box that pops up every time I run notepad++ warning me about the program.

            Start Menu, Control Panel, User Accounts, Turn User Account Controls Off

            4) Mysterious periods of disk thrashing.

            Defrag. If this does not fix the issue, you do not have enough Ram. Just remember, minimum system requirements is not the same as optimal system requirements. 512 Ram is going to constantly hit the paging file on your HD, a gig will be sufficient if yo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          I must admit after hearing for years how fantastic Longhorn was going to be and seeing the 32 bit Vista result I'm bashing it mostly due to disappointment. The 64 bit version also seems to be a step down from the quite good 64 bit Server 2003 that has been out for a couple of years. I don't use the thing I only fix it on the admittedly few installs in the place where I work so I've only seen it at it's worst. The biggest problem I see with it is laptops that really do not have the specs to run it coming

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by harry666t ( 1062422 )
          OK, I recently decided not to bash Vista until I see it doing something wrong "in action". I do not own a computer that is powerful enough to run Vista so I had to wait until I can play around with it on someone else's machine.

          Then, one of my friends had Vista on her laptop, and she said she was satisfied with it. I thought, OK, let's see how good it really is.

          The very first thing she was trying to do with her laptop that afternoon: playing a movie. She fired up Explorer, browsed to the right directory, tri
      • You're not the only one. I installed it in April 2007 and although I had one minor issue installing it (missing nVidia drivers for a 'fakeraid' setup), I've not had any issues since. Before I decided to go with Vista I tried out Ubuntu, but for my home use Vista is a lot less hassle.

        I mainly use my home PC for media management (music, videos, photos), Photoshop and the occasional game of COD4 or TF2. Sure, XP might be faster for Photoshop and playing games (although for games the difference is so marginal

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dreamchaser ( 49529 )
        Nope, there are a few more of us. I use various OSes for various things. Vista is not all that bad on a machine with sufficient power.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gravis777 ( 123605 )
        You are not alone. I LOVE Vista. The only machine I have had issues with vista on is my work laptop, and that is due to some crappy Intel graphics driver. However, they released a new version a couple of weeks ago, and I have not had any issues with it since then. Get this, I have had programs that stopped working in XP but work just fine in Vista. Go figure. No, I am triple booting on my home machine (Vista 64 Business, XP 64 Pro, and XP Pro) and dual booting on my work laptop, and pretty much just boot ba
      • It can depend on the computer you run it on. I run Vista on my laptop - not really any issues there. It works pretty decently when I need it.

        On my Windows desktop though (a custom assembled machine), I ran into all sorts of problems. Apparently it doesn't have included driver support for the Promise Ultra66 IDE controller (but XP does . . .), which I have to use to interface 2 of my hard drive (my motherboard doesn't have enough ports for my optical drives and all my hard drives). So, I was without 2 of

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by W2k ( 540424 )
        Here, here. Vista's been working just fine for me. I even installed it on a 5-year-old PC and it runs fine, albeit not as snappy as on my more modern Dell Precision. It's all-around better than XP in any case. Installed SP1 (got it via MSDN subscription) recently and so far I've had no problems. I have absolutely zero reasons to consider downgrading to XP.

    • Re:Moment of truth... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sunami88 ( 1074925 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @03:22AM (#22771034)
      Now to see how many "I'll wait for SP1 before moving to Vista" people actually follow through.

      That was, they'll wait for SP1 to pass judgment. Not wait for SP1 then blindly buy.
    • I know enough people who didn't switch from W2K to XP-Pro until XP SP2. May be the case here too. That, or when they get a new computer -- as it's not worth the standalone upgrade cost alone for most people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        Heh, I was one of those people. It looks like I might do the same thing with Vista, especially since my machine has a bunch of older hardware in it that probably has not had a driver update for Vista (not that I've looked really hard yet). Given how some of it was barely supported in XP (BT878 based capture card for instance), I don't have high hopes.

  • Backup - but do backups work properly yet? (Score:5, Informative)

    by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @02:50AM (#22770894)
    I believe there is/was a shadow volume copy problem with Vista that prevented complete backups. If shadow volume copy does not work you will not be able to back things up like the registry. Either way a complete disk image will work since you do it from outside of the OS. This can be done with "partimage" on knoppix for free or Acronis and various others for a nicer UI.

  • Somehow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by unbug ( 1188963 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @02:53AM (#22770912)
    ... I can't help but pity those poor Vista users. What should be simply the release of a patch has become a major "event" which people actually have to prepare for and which, from what I hear, is even causing something quite similar to mild panic. But then again, you do get great DRM for your troubles.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by FoolsGold ( 1139759 )
      Like I said elsewhere, SP1 is somewhat significant because a lot of people have stated they will move to Vista once the first service pack arrives. Now we have to see if that will actually happen.

      I won't comment on the DRM because it really isn't as serious as a lot of Slashdotters think.

      • No comment. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by WK2 ( 1072560 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @06:00AM (#22771670) Homepage

        I won't comment on the DRM because it really isn't as serious as a lot of Slashdotters think.

        I won't respond to your comment, but DRM is BUILT-IN to the Operating System. How much more serious can it get?

    • Re:Somehow... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sunami88 ( 1074925 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @03:24AM (#22771038)

      ... I can't help but pity those poor Vista users. What should be simply the release of a patch has become a major "event" which people actually have to prepare for and which, from what I hear, is even causing something quite similar to mild panic. But then again, you do get great DRM for your troubles.
      I don't have mod points, so bring on the Flame bait mods. What do you call the Mac OS distribution system? Updates or epiphanies.

      I just want an accurate frame for your post, Mac troll or Linux user.

    • ... I can't help but pity those poor Vista users. What should be simply the release of a patch has become a major "event" which people actually have to prepare for and which, from what I hear, is even causing something quite similar to mild panic. But then again, you do get great DRM for your troubles.

      I think you're reading Slashdot a bit too much. ;-)

      Most people have no trouble with service pack upgrades, as they've been tested a long time before getting released.

      Actually, I think Vista SP1 seem to have had a longer testing period than usual.

      The DRM comment seems like a a non sequiteur; Vista SP1 includes no "great DRM" extras.

      Actually, even Vista RTM makes the DRM thing entirely optional. Those with a brain will just boycott DRM media and avoid it altogether. Like me. Playing pirated HD video on my 5

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by clang_jangle ( 975789 )

        Most people have no trouble with service pack upgrades, as they've been tested a long time before getting released. Actually, I think Vista SP1 seem to have had a longer testing period than usual.


        Ummm, were you off-world last month when enough people had trouble with Vista SP1 MS recalled it?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      I use Vista and I haven't had any major issues with it. There have been some minor incompatibility issues with some apps that I have resolved, and some annoyances like UAC which I have disabled but in general Vista has performed extremely well. The Vista desktop is *much* better than XP's. Performance overall is slightly better than XP though games seem to have lower performance. I have no issue with the quality of Vista compared to any other OS I've used which all have their fair share of bugs and crashes.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • funny (Score:3, Funny)

    by joaommp ( 685612 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @03:42AM (#22771088) Homepage Journal
    Gentoo 2008.0 was schedulled to be released on that same day...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by RiotingPacifist ( 1228016 )
      unfortunatly nobody will be seen using the new gentoo until 2009, *begins compiling*....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ozbird ( 127571 )
        Mod down (-1, Obsolete hardware).

        A complete "emerge -e world" rebuild shouldn't take more than a day or two, even with a "fully sick" installation on any salvageable system. Unless you're a complete masochist and install OpenOffice.org from source; life's too short for C++.
    • Wow a blast from the past I haven't heard about Gentoo in a while. Sadly enough I never quite got the system with the write specs to get a clean compile.
  • Did anyone else look at the title of this article and immediately think of "Battered person syndrome [wikipedia.org]"? I did for some reason. Weird.

  • XP SP3? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 )
    When is XP SP3 coming out? I need to do a reformat of my machine. I have the all-in-one SP2 installer and I don't want to have to download all the stupid patches between SP2 and today separately.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nimey ( 114278 )
      XP SP3 is scheduled for the first half of this year, so in theory we'll get it by 30 June.

      Interestingly, 30 June is when XP sales are supposed to stop, so any official XP SP3 CDs are going to be rare, but there will be 3rd-party tools to slipstream in the service pack.

  • Rock and hard place. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by apodyopsis ( 1048476 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @04:22AM (#22771236)
    One thing is for certain..

    ..after the initial release then pull, the bricked PCs, the host of security issues and the whole general fuck up that MS have done over vista so far I predict a cautious, "if I must", approach from sys admins with every possible protection and back-up in place. This is not going to be a stampede for the latest secure patches. Truly MS has been a shot in the foot release for them.

    Second the poster higher up: it will sure be interested to see how many of the wait for SP1 adopters now follow through and adopt.

    Given the general widely held feeling about the the superiority of XP over Vista I cannot see many people clamoring to do so. But on the flip argument MS will withdraw XP soon to try and force adoption of Vista - this would leave many potential customers between a brick and a hard place.

    No bother to me - I've been linux only at home for ~8 years (so I guess I'm biased) - but we sure live in interesting times.
    • It wasn't released-then-pulled. An update for the updater app, which would've allowed people to install SP1 in future, was pulled when it turned out it borked systems. SP1 itself has yet to hit any form of Windows Update.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @04:27AM (#22771266)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Early Adopters Suffer. (Score:3)

    by headkase ( 533448 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @04:48AM (#22771378)
    Be glad you didn't buy Vista on day 1. The first six months sucked royally I've read and it's only recently become better. For myself, I bought Vista the day that Service Pack 1 was announced so I missed most of the ... joy ... I got on ship when it was reasonably nice. And about 3 weeks ago ZDNet was kind enough to publish MD5's of the final release MS sent them to evangalize about so I was able to acquire a copy, the MD5's matched so the worst it could be was a key collision and the installer wasn't corrupted so it was legit. It even shows the correct build number in System Information. Now since I didn't jump on ship until after they bailed some of the water out its been a fairly smooth ride for me. And since I installed SP1 I guess it's better - some things like alt-tabbing out of games don't wonk (thats a technical term) the system anymore so all in all its an incremental improvement. And it's definitely a lot less of a shock transitioning from XP to Vista than it was from 98 to XP headache wise.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Ahrel ( 1064770 )
      Was only the first 2 months for me. After Creative released the driver for my soundcard, all was and has remained well since then. I did buy a 2nd GB of RAM though, because I noticed that things opened slower than in XP, but mainly because I was utilizing over 70% of my RAM with Firefox and Foobar open. The biggest problem I experienced with Vista post the good, strike that, working Creative drivers was getting Star Wars KotOR II and Grim Fandango to run.

      Continually, I find myself defending Vista in m
      • Exactly, I'm another random hardware configuration and my: Sony Walkman, TV card, and soundcard worked off of the fresh install. I had to install my printer driver, SonicStage for the Walkman, and my video card driver all of which had Vista builds. From what I read around the 'net I thought I must have got the Magic Disc or something! On the other hand first impressions do count a lot when people are forming opinions and Vista out of the gate did suffer when you consider that although all my stuff just w
  • I've been running SP1 RTM for a while and Vista since the betas. I find that SP1 has fixed a LOT of the stability issues and BSODs that I had. Speed on some operation is better, but overall, Vista still seems slower than XP.

    What I have found is that a lot of issues were caused by sleep/hibernate being broken and that most of the remainder are caused by drivers. The discovery data from the Vista lawsuit shows that MS knew they'd broken lots of drivers and that Intel drivers were pathetic. Vista would hav

  • Vista failage (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brian Kendig ( 1959 ) on Monday March 17, 2008 @07:59AM (#22772274)
    My favorite Vista travesty is that it takes several minutes to move a folder containing several gigabytes of files.

    Let me reiterate: I'm dragging one folder icon into a different folder. An operation which, for Mac or Linux, merely involves rewriting an inode. But for Windows Vista, a dialog box comes up which shows the computer recursively going through every file and directory in the folder I'm moving, as if a file or folder somehow needs its location updated independently of the folder it's in. Several minutes later, my drag has finished being processed.

    I've heard that Vista SP1 improves file handling, so two weeks ago I obtained Vista Service Pack 1 through the MSDN membership at my workplace. But a few minutes into the install, it fails with error 0x8007000d and points me to a tech note which advises me to turn off antivirus (done), run a disk check (done), and then run 'sfc /scannow' which tells me there's some sort of corruption in a system file and that I should look at cbs.log, which I do, and it contains several thousands of lines of messages I can't understand, much less figure out whether they're errors. Near as I can figure, the culprit is that the SP1 installer can't delete a file named windir\ehome\ehres.dll, so I try moving that out of the way by hand, but no combination of things I try can get it to move - Windows keeps telling me I don't have permission to move it, even if I try renaming it from a command shell run as administrator, even if I boot into safe mode.

    I have a feeling, come tomorrow when Vista SP1 is released to the masses, there's going to be more headscratching than celebrating.

  • I went to the "Heros Happen Here" brain dump last week, just for the free software. Along with server 2008, SQL 2008 and Studio 2008, they threw in a copy of Vista Ultimate w/SP1 already installed.

    And for the record, Vista Ultimate SP1 is slower than XP on my machine.

  • "...and locate their restore media." (Score:3, Informative)

    by More_Cowbell ( 957742 ) * on Monday March 17, 2008 @01:31PM (#22775694) Journal
    Except I don't HAVE any restore media. Brand new Vaio and they refused to provide or sell me a backup copy of Vista like you used to get with XP. Instead they now have an integrated 'backup/restore' partition that supposedly you can use to recover to a particular saved point and time with. Oh, and it reduced my HD space by almost half. Fresh out of the box I have 46GB available on a 100GB drive.

    Granted it does seem somewhat useful; I was able to roll back an instillation when a vpn client gave me a BSOD. However, what am I supposed to do if I CAN'T BOOT TO WINDOWS?

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