The long awaited Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is scheduled for a release later this week and Microsoft is doing its best to provide everyone, from the end user to the it professional, with information about the upcoming service pack 1. Five documents in total have been released that address specific user groups.
Two of the documents, Deployment Guide for the RC1 Version of Windows Vista SP1 and Enterprise Guidance for Application Compatibility Testing and Windows Vista SP1, are clearly aimed at organizations and companies while the remaining three documents, Hotfixes and Security Updates in Windows Vista SP1, Notable Changes in Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate and Overview of Windows Vista SP1, might also be interesting to end users who want to read more about the changes that the new Service Pack 1 will bring.
Even if you only look at the last three documents you might find this to be incredibly time consuming. Some of the noteworthy changes that I found are:
Two of the documents, Deployment Guide for the RC1 Version of Windows Vista SP1 and Enterprise Guidance for Application Compatibility Testing and Windows Vista SP1, are clearly aimed at organizations and companies while the remaining three documents, Hotfixes and Security Updates in Windows Vista SP1, Notable Changes in Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate and Overview of Windows Vista SP1, might also be interesting to end users who want to read more about the changes that the new Service Pack 1 will bring.
Even if you only look at the last three documents you might find this to be incredibly time consuming. Some of the noteworthy changes that I found are:
- SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista
- Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media
- Improves Windows Vista's built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup.
- Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth
- Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
- Improves performance over Windows Vista's current performance across the following scenarios1:
• 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
• 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
• 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system - Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
- Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
- Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.
- Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.
- Adds support for new strong cryptographic algorithms used in IPsec. SHA-256, AES-GCM, and AES-GMAC for ESP and AH, ECDSA, SHA-256, and SHA-384 for IKE and AuthIP
- Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking
- With SP1, Windows Vista will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS. Therefore 32-bit systems equipped with 4GB of RAM will report all 4BG in many places throughout the OS, such as the System Control Panel. However, this behavior is dependent on having a compatible BIOS, so not all users may notice this change. Download of the documents called
Windows Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals.
