Comments on: Sorting out the details on Vista SP1 availability

Microsoft released the code to manufacturing last month, but it could be next month before it shows up on retail shelves--and it's unclear when PC makers will start offering the update.

[whizkid454]

Should be available tomorrow or the 19th...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1269

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/17/vista-sp1-officially-coming-tomorrow/

[Johnno74]

My vista experience

12 months ago now I brought a dell latitude D820, with Vista Business preinstalled. I was never happy with it, it seemed slow and bloated, the memory use just wasn't what I believed it should be. With Outlook, 2x Visual Studio and SQL management studio open my memory usage was normally around 2.5gb and the machine was painful to use.

The performance and reliability updates helped, and I installed the release candidate of SP1 as soon as I could and that helped too but I was still tempted to go back to XP.

I decided to give vista another chance, and formatted and re-installed, installed SP1 immediately, then all my apps.

The difference is astounding. I don't know what the problem was with dell's vista installation, but my memory usage is now 0.5-1gb lower than it was under all circumstances. Before after a clean boot I never had less than 1.4gb of memory allocated. Now its 800-900mb. With 2xVS, Sql studio and outlook I am using less than 2gb.

Overall my machine is much, much snappier and doesn't give me any grief. Vista no longer seems slow and bloated. My frame rates in FSX have also nearly doubled, which I'm at a loss to explain as I'm using the same drivers.

So, now I'm officially a vista convert. It makes me wonder how many people buy a new machines with a dodgy preinstalled vista image, they find it slow and bloated, so they re-install XP, find it much better and then go out and bag vista.

So, if you are less than impressed with vista on the machine you just brought try a rebuild.

[zimz2689]

I agree

I had a laptop with windows xp preinstalled on it, then I upgraded to Vista (business) and it seemed slower than xp (i have a gig of ram by the way). So i decided to format and install a fresh copy of vista on it and it seems to run a lot faster. (I also installed vista sp1 RC1

[sroussey]

Me too!

I wiped two machines and started over (though this time installing Vista SP1 x64-bit). Both a new machine and the old machine are miraculously better: more responsive, use less memory, etc. It's like it is there when you need and you forget it's there otherwise. Like it should be.

I ordered more RAM (since it was 64-bit, I though I might as well), but now notice that I don't need it. Still going to install it though, RAM is cheap these days!

[Vegaman_Dan]

True of most OS's, clean isntall vs update

For the best possible results, it's always advisable to do a clean install over doing any sort of upgrade. It doesn't matter what OS you are running- if you choose to do a large OS update, then you'll be inheriting the problems of the previous install. A clean install will always yield the best results.

[pmfjoe]

I would also agree from testing...

Over the last few days on my companies test lab computers we upgraded two of them to SP1 (these both had very little software installed on them, but were not clean installs of RTM Vista) and while the file transfer speed seemed better there really didn't seem to be much difference in operational speed. So we did a clean install of Vista with SP1 integrated and the difference in operational speed was night and day they now perform very close to XP in standard use. I would note we did not try a clean install of RTM Vista and then immediately installing SP1 since we had the Vista with the SP1 already integrated off MS Technet, also we did not run any benchmark tests so the speed is only the opinion of the people who have used these machines.

[Maclover1]

Not surprising.

I always...ALWAYS, blow away any install on any computer I own.
Even OS X, because I get rid of 2gig of language files and trail
software. I will say OS X comes with 90% trial/crapware
compared to Windows.

Microsoft needs to realize even with XP back in the day that Dell,
HP and all the rest hurt Windows with the huge amount of crap
they install. I dont understand why Dell and others dont get
this.

That said any OS will be faster after a clean install, one that uses
a registry...way more for sure.

So I guess Vista is finally ready for RTM with SP1? Sorry to late
for me.

[pablouk1]

Vitsa Pah!

This "fix" is far too little and far too late.
Vista has failed, it was released with too many problems and it was far to expensive, its only selling feature DX10 has been a bust.
I and many others have gone back to steady XP and like the rest I will wait for the real son of XP.
I have one machine out of 5 with vista on, its two days old and waiting too see the SP1 before being changed to XP

[slickuser]

MS Engineers - READ THIS

I have Lenovo T60 with Vista UltimateCrap for about an year now. I couldn't use my HP OfficeJet 5215. I updated with SP1. Still couldn't print to it. Installed/Reinstalled/Rebooted numerous times. No luck.

My new Mac Mini, within (literally) 5 mins, after I turned it on for the first time, I was able to print to HP4215. It didn't even ask me install any drivers. It didn't prompt me for any drivers!

Learn from Apple!!!

[sroussey]

HP bites on drivers

I'm not sure what the policy is on bundling drivers for old (2004) discontinued products. It might be that it requires some sort of payment from HP, and they declined.

But it took me less than a minute to go to HP.com, search for "OfficeJet 4215" and get the driver here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=2093&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=351106&lang=en

And you could have done it a year ago.

[pfletcher]

don't spam the forums

learn how to use your hardware properly instead and don't tell lies about a Mac mini

[rkinne01]

re: Ms Engineers

Did it ever occur to you to blame HP for producing crappy drivers?

[slickuser]

typo - HP4215

typo

[sroussey]

Didn't mean to include "bites"

Haha... they should let us edit out posts...

[sroussey]

Still no drivers for MS hardware

Microsoft still does not include 64-bit drivers for their own hardware (fingerprint reader, and related keyboards, mice). Not sure why other people would if MS doesn't itself...

[SeizeCTRL]

Exactly

This has bugged me since the day I installed Vista 64... that my finger print reader became useless. I ended up installing it on my work computer which still is XP.

It's a damn shame they can't even support their own 64 bit *****, yet working with their evil step brother Intel on multicore crap. How freaking hard is it to write a few drivers? They have had well over a year to come up with one.

[slickuser]

i know how to search

ofcourse I tried HP drivers.!!

Installed/Reinstalled/Rebooted numerous times.

[The_happy_switcher]

a case of herpes

is looked forward to more

[gp2792]

uh-huh

I am sure one of your troll buddies has already given you that. I am
betting it was "The_Decider"...

[ferretboy88]

go away apple nut

Why do you feel the need to come in this thread and say silly things?

[kevinskrause]

Lies?

No one is lying about Mac. (see Discussions). All of you are ticked because your OS is inferior. I bought my first Mac 4 months ago and my overall productivity as a financial advisor has increased by 38%, and growing. I can connect any, and I mean any peripheral to my Mac and it immediately works with no equivocations. More importantly, I can open, read, and format any document sent to my Mac right out of the box without having to load additional, expensive software.

And to think, I was worried about compatibility issues when I switched to Mac. In hindsight, it was Window?s that was hindering my productivity.

Note: CNET rated Mac as being the best PC for running Window?s. Who would have ?thunk? it. Do yourself a favor and make the leap. I?m happy I did.

P.S. I am anything but a fanboy so save the comments. We?ve all heard them before.

[Penguinisto]

...and here come the explosions...

http://itnews.com.au/News/72401,windows-vista-sp1-wreaks-havoc-on-some-pcs-users-complain.aspx

[i]" Other troubles reported by Vista SP1 users ranged from a simple inability to download the software from Microsoft's Windows Update site to sudden spikes in memory usage. "Went from using 650 MB RAM idle to 1 Gig... I'll be switching back," said "Kurrier." "[/i]

...okay, I just gotta know: What kind of bloated pile of steaming kludge requires 650 MEGABYTES OF RAM just to run itself!?

Damn... just... damn.

/P