Vista SP1 Microsoft Could Not Have Given Less Vista SP2 Anyone?
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 3.10.2007
Microsoft had the chance to position the first service pack for Windows Vista as a panacea for the operating system, giving the platform nothing less than a fresh start and another take at the Wow.
Instead, Vista SP1 will deliver close to nothing. Users should expect little, because they will get it in full, and because Microsoft could not have given anything less with the refresh. And if you believe that the company didn't try, then you are sadly mistaken. Microsoft in fact stripped Vista SP1 down to the bare bones, leaving only the essential architecture that would qualify as a service pack. All strictly non-essential features, capabilities, features and improvements were killed from the status of concept, none of them making it to the embryonic stage.
A member of the Windows Installer Team explained why they had to pull references for Windows Installer 4.1, designed especially for Windows Vista SP1, from MSDN and to cancel version 4.1 altogether. "What changed was that the new guard in Windows had a very different bar for the Vista SP than had been in practice for previous releases (at least in my memory). Generally there is lip service to no large feature work in a SP but this time folks listened. Big feature adds were heavily scrutinized. The items we wanted to fix in the SP, UAC tweaks, were big feature by the new bar. When the UAC tweaks were rejected for Vista SP1, the justification for 4.1 faded as there were no new features in the Windows Installer in Vista SP1," the Windows Installer Team member stated.
The new guard at Microsoft is formed by Kevin Johnson, President, Platforms & Services Division; Jon DeVaan, Senior Vice President, Windows Core Operating System Division and Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group...although the last executive might be more familiar to you as Steven codename Translucency Sinofsky, the source of the Windows Omerta. By comparison, the old guard involved Jim Allchin, (Former) Co-President, Platforms & Services Division; Brian Valentine (former) senior vice president of the Windows Division and Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President, Windows Live Experience Program Management.
Johnson, DeVaan and Sinofsky lowered the standard as much as possible on the features that would end up in Vista SP1. In this context, the service pack will be comprised of regular Windows Vista updates, application compatibility improvements, device driver improvements, enhancements to performance, reliability and security and a few tweaks to the default desktop search mechanism. Vista SP1 will be nothing more than a standard service pack, planned for the first quarter of 2008. However, the generalized consumer perception, and the continuous user preference focused on Windows XP seem to point to the fact that Vista would actually need a SP2 that will be a repeat of the second service pack for XP.
source:
news.softpedia.com
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Comments(7)
i don't know what's this guy's problem, but vista sp1 was never meant to be big
release. as a matter of fact, sps were never big in bloating features. in retrospect, xp
sp2 was an odd ball amongst the long line of nt sps.
the release timing of
vista sp1/xp sp3 has alot to do with windows server 2008, which is microsoft's real bread
and butter. no unnecessary features means more time for the quality of the sp1.
(triple-constraint anyone?)
this marius oiaga just somehow forget microsoft is
on the clock: doj ordered sp1 to be released at the end of 2007. not to mention he just
downplayed a whole lot of the changes for the search mechanism as "a few tweaks to the
default desktop search mechanism". there's a whole new set of api implemented in sp1
especially for 3rd party desktop search and this guy magically not seeing that.
at the end of the day, this guy was just keep repeating himself saying "sp1 is not
big enough", which he wrote like 1000 times already? if he want to bash vista, please
pick something substantial, say the broken networking stack for a starter.
christ...it's not even public beta yet!
talk about premature ejaculation.
when vista was released, people quickly realized it had slower boot time than xp and
benchmarks show that computers run slower on vista than xp. i mean the data speaks for
itself. yet microsoft promised vista would boot faster than xp and run faster than xp.
(i can show you numerous links to both their promises and actual benchmarks by respected
publications.)
so, people were hoping sp1 would be the "magic bullet" where
microsoft delivered on what they promised -- instead of just being liars.
technically speaking, vista does boot faster than xp. the problem is 3rd party driver
that took forever to initialize. you can avoid hardware drivers by setting up a virtual
machine and see for yourself.
frankly, before vista rtm there were years of
rc/alpha/beta builds and hardware vendors still couldn't get their driver ready. from
creative's "dog ate my homework" to nvidia's total fubar, it was beyond absurd.
if this service pack is to be worth more than spit, their biggest goal should be to patch
and tackle the instability of vista.
some items that need serious work are:
-windows installer 4.0 - easily corrupted forcing reinstall in some cases
-network/domain browsing - slow and cumbersome. mapping drives is a lesson in pain with
vista
-drivers that work in a stable manner. also add drivers for those poor tuner
card users (all in wonder, etc.)
-application compatibility
- uac tweaking -
it's annoying and useless because most users disable it as their first step after
installation in most cases.
- difficulties with printers - adding network printers
works, sometimes.
-many small annoyances need to be fixed
basically i feel
microsoft was in a rush to launch vista asap so what they did was rename the rc to rtm and
released it. vista doesn't feel like a full releaase, it seems beta-ish. sp1 will help
address some of these issues, though will users finally be ready for "prime time". those
interested in upgrading to vista should wait until after the sp1 launch to make sure it
fixed things sufficiently. corporate/business users like myself need stability and most
companies haven't thought of upgrading until they see this. if you read about the
business world still unhappy with vista after sp1, then don't upgrade as sp1 is
microsoft's make or break point.
vista sp1 does actually fix alot of things underneath the hood.. the kernel goes up to
match that of server 2008 and therefore inherits its security, stability, and reliability.
this can be seen in the increase of speed and performance in various areas such as
standard file operations.
however i do agree that vista sp2 should be like a second
release type of thing. it would get aligned with server 2008 sp1. they should be able to
slip updated versions of vista's internal programs with that update. perhaps sp2 will be
like r2 ?
service packs are not expansion packs. they are and have always been just a collection of
updates. sp2 for xp was an oddball release, and now everyone expects miracles from every
sp since.
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because it wasn't suppose to be "more"
By samic on 04.10.2007 - 05:10