Vista SP1

Windows Vista Experience... Safe, easier, reliable and versatile. Microsoft is welcoming users to the Windows Vista experience, a website focused on Service Pack 1 for the latest version of the Windows client.

Even though SP1 for Windows Vista was released to manufacturing in February 2008, and the gold bits of the service pack began being available to the general public in March, Microsoft is still issuing updates for the RTM version of its latest Windows client.It is the case of a compatibility and reliability update for Vista RTM, re-released on May 21, 2008, well after Microsoft wrapped up with Service Pack 1.

A video is making the rounds showing how Vista SP1 has significantly improved Vista's immensely annoying User Account Control (UAC). But there appears to be less to the improvement than meets the eye --- hardly any changes were made to UAC in SP1, and it remains a very big Vista annoyance. Microsoft blogger Michael Kleef has made a video that he says illustrates how much better UAC is under SP1 than before SP1. It very nicely shows that when you create a new folder in Program Files, you only need to go through one UAC prompt under Vista SP1, rather than four previously.

You can get Windows XP SP3 through Windows Update. The entire process of updating a fresh installation of Windows XP SP2, including downloading via a high-bandwidth cable mode, took less than 45 minutes and only required a single reboot.

Even as Microsoft tries to shove Windows Vista down the collective and unwilling throat of computer users worldwide, the company is still perfecting the well-aged and well-loved Windows XP. The latter of the two operating systems just received its third (and evidently last) service pack. The collection of fixes and improvements includes the vast majority of security and performance updates, patches, and other stuff released in the two plus years SP2 was released. It also includes a few new improvements. There's little in SP3 that the user will actually see; pretty much everything the service pack packs is background stuff.

Ever since the advent of Windows Vista , at the end of November 2006 for businesses and in January 2007 for the general public, Microsoft has virtually invited the comparison between the two operating systems.

In the TalkBack section on my post looking at SP3 benchmarks, deitrich asked a really good question: Adrian, how about a comparison of XP SP3 vs Vista SP1? Oui? C’est possible?Good question! Fortunately I’ve already done a fair bit of the groundwork in that I used the Phenom 9700 system I have for benchmarking both XP SP3 and Vista SP1. I benchmarked both operating systems using PassMark PerformanceTest 6.1 and bringing together the results from both tests allows me to answer _deitrich’s question.

The  Windows Vista vs. Windows XP face-off is far from over. Not only that, but the smackdown of the two operating systems is about to enter into its next stage of evolution with Microsoft launching the latest service packs for both platforms.

With Windows Vista and Windows XP concomitantly available on the market, the Redmond company inherently catalyzed the comparison between the two Windows clients.But the fact of the matter is that the benchmarks, comparisons of features, capabilities, market shares and security vulnerability measuring contests performed since Vista became available have managed to hurt Microsoft's Windows business where it counts more.

On the Microsoft TechNet forums, a handful of users began reporting (in early April) that after installing Windows Vista SP1 various applications would stop launching and instead gave the error "Not a valid Win32 application." Users found that Excel would often spit this message out and if they tried running it under administrative rights, the error would change to "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.