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One of the very best sites for picking up information on the world of Microsoft is Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows. Paul recently posted a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and I decided to go through it and summarize a few of the things that you should know about SP1.
Essentially, SP1 is a collection of previously release fixes, security patches and updates to Windows Vista. If you’re diligent about keeping your machine up-to-date, you should already have most of these updates already installed.
Microsoft made a change to the Kernel Patch protection that ensures that security companies won’t be able to integrate as tightly with the OS as was possible in previous versions. If you think this a bad thing, then you’ve never tried to remove Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee. Dynamite and exorcism is usually required. This won’t be the case with Vista.
When Vista was released in early 2007, it sported device compatibility with about 40,000 devices. After the release of SP1, that number has jumped to almost 80,000. So if your device wasn’t supported previously under Vista, it may be now.
Ever tried to copy a few files around on a Vista machine? At times it could be painful. Or you’d see Microsoft’s estimate of time remaining for the copy to be somewhere around 15,000 days. That’s now fixed, and I can confirm that myself, as I don’t see numbers like that anymore.
If you already have Vista installed on your machine, and would like to upgrade it to SP1, you *may* be in luck now. As of mid-March, it was available through Windows Update, or if you have Automatic Updates enabled. However, Microsoft discovered some issues with some hardware configurations and has delayed release of SP1 for those machines until mid-April. Microsoft is also not releasing information on which configurations are affected by this either, so if you don’t get the option to upgrade to SP1 until later int the spring, you can probably safely assume that something in your machine was delaying the upgrade.
If you have any further questions about Vista or SP1 that you’d like to see answered here, please leave a comment.