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  (Source: Reuters)
Customers will be able to download SP1 tomorrow; retail versions will be in stores on Wednesday.

Microsoft's long-awaited service pack for Windows Vista is reported to be heading to consumers tomorrow. The RTM version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was first released to testers in early February after a lengthy gestation period.

Customers will have two ways to obtain SP1: a stand-alone installer can be downloaded directly from Microsoft's Download Center or users can get the update through Windows Update where it will be labeled as an optional update. Systems that have drivers which are currently known to be incompatible with SP1 will not be permitted to install the update.

"Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. Any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not upgrade successfully will not be offered SP1," said a Microsoft spokeswoman.

SP1 already caused problems for some testers who installed the RTM version, so Microsoft is likely trying to minimize a problematic launch for a larger consumer-based rollout -- the last thing that Vista needs is more fuel added to the fire that surrounds the operating system.

Customers will be able to purchase retail-packaged versions of Windows Vista with SP1 already incorporated starting on Wednesday. Those who pick up the retail versions will also take advantage of new, lower pricing that Microsoft introduced late last month.

Microsoft dropped the prices for Windows Vista Ultimate (Full), Windows Vista Ultimate (Upgrade), and Windows Vista Home Premium (Upgrade) to $319, $219, and $129 respectively. Interestingly enough, Amazon.com offers even lower prices for the software on its site at $299.99, $194.99, and $94.99 respectively.

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RTM?
By Kefner on 3/17/2008 11:05:50 AM , Rating: 3
I have the RTM version of SP1 installed. I assume this is identical? Anyone know for sure?




RE: RTM?
By 325hhee on 3/17/2008 11:20:19 AM , Rating: 4
As far as SP1 goes, it's just mostly a cumulative file of all the patches that has been released since it's launch, there maybe only 1 or 2 files that aren't from the updates they've been releasing. Vista has stablized itself in about 4 months since launch. It's just the backlash of it's initial launch that people are still harping about.

And keep in mind, the majority of the people that chant Vista sucks are, Apple users, people that installed Vista and uninstalled it from a day to 1 month of its release, and people that never used it, but keeps saying it, because it's what they "hear".

I know one person that stuck with Vista since launch date, and he said everything, but his Nvidia drivers are stable and running fine, with the exception to that dreaded X-Fi card and 4 gigs of ram.

I just reinstalled it myself. I just wish the classic view I have is a later windows look instead of 95. I hate the new look and I don't use Aero, it's stable, everything works, duo cores are working 20% better than on XP, Vista drivers for my ATI works, Sound Blaster new drivers seem good so far, I haven't crashed yet with 4 gigs, but it's still to early, I haven't done any massive raids, so I can't tell if I'll get the BSoD, but I don't blame Vista, I blame Creative on that, and especially on the XP side, they didn't release a driver since Oct '06 and even their new ones still crashed on me that was released a couple of days ago.

Rant off. Vista is fine, and yes it uses more memory, but it's caching stuff, and manages memory a lot better than XP. And remember when XP first came out, it sucked balls too, it was just as bad if not worse than Vista launch. Look how long it took XP to be accepted.


RE: RTM?
By noirsoft on 3/17/2008 11:31:35 AM , Rating: 5
You really should turn Aero on if you have a GPU that can handle it. The CPU savings and responsiveness increase are worth it. The computer definitely "feels" faster.


RE: RTM?
By blaster5k on 3/17/2008 11:42:02 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah, the interface actually runs a lot smoother with it on. No tearing either.


RE: RTM?
By threepac3 on 3/17/2008 12:43:06 PM , Rating: 2
Try it in Classic theme the GPU, CPU and memory savings is worth it.


RE: RTM?
By B3an on 3/17/2008 1:11:08 PM , Rating: 5
Why would you even care if it saves GPU processing power? Hardly any software uses the GPU within Windows so why not just let Aero make use of the GPU?

I've found that turning on Aero SAVES CPU processing power, as the GPU does a lot of the work the CPU would normally do. Theres been benches on this that prove it too. Simple things like dragging windows around uses less CPU load. It also gets rids of that annoying screen tearing that you get in XP and older Windows OS's.

As for memory it's so cheap now you can get 4GB DDR2 for under $80.


RE: RTM?
By goku on 3/17/2008 7:34:53 PM , Rating: 5
great you save a few cpu cycles which use little power and then you replace it with a LOT of gpu cycles which use a LOT of power.

How thoughtful!


RE: RTM?
By leidegre on 3/18/08, Rating: 0
RE: RTM?
By gramboh on 3/17/2008 11:39:10 AM , Rating: 4
I've been using Vista x64 Ultimate as my only OS since mid January. I have zero problems (with NV 8800GTS 640, 4GB memory, Creative X-Fi). The OS is great, better than XP for sure.


RE: RTM?
By blaster5k on 3/17/2008 11:55:07 AM , Rating: 4
When I started using Vista, I had some problems with ATI drivers, but that's been resolved for some time. Also had some fluke Windows Update issues that seem to be resolved. Overall, it's been just as stable as XP.

People complain about memory requirements, but I really don't see the issue when you can get 2GB for $30. Vista needs more memory, but it also uses it better than XP did, so once you have it, you'll see better performance.

There is one thing that I'm not happy about with Vista -- the activation. It always tries to renew the activation and I've had that fail on me twice when I didn't even make any hardware changes. I had to call Microsoft, which is a royal pain in the ass. That's what I get for buying a legitimate copy I guess...


RE: RTM?
By sprockkets on 3/17/2008 12:07:03 PM , Rating: 1
Yep, I will rant. Because I just tried 64 bit vista on a new computer with a 780G AMD chipset, and while it does boot up and the drivers installed, all of Vista's crap is always there to remind me: Needing to turn off UAC, Buffalo's wireless adapter not working for unknown reasons (but works fine on XP), the hard drive is continuously churning away hours and hours after install, having windows update fail on a fresh install and needing to use system restore to fix it since none of the error codes find any solutions on microsoft's web site, tried to watch some video online from netflix, only to have it stutter so much because that damn hdd is still churning away for who knows what, days after the install (it said I had low bandwidth, but since the wireless wouldn't install I used ethernet, so that was just horse manure).

Sure, 325hhee, caching is great, especially when I have to wait for it to cache 1.75GB of stuff into ram that I will not even use, wasting my time as it boots up. And if you will mention that some of that HDD churning is windows doing the indexing of my files, then I will say, not even Linux with Beagle search does the endless indexing anymore.

And no, XP was greeted with joy because for the general public, it gave windows 9x and ME users some much needed stability. And with people now using 7200rpm hard drives, some of that extra overhead was eased. With vista, I guess I need now a raptor or oh that's right, READYBOOST!

Look, Vista will be fine someday. But aeroglass and company does not justify the needless frustration it causes over XP. And SP1 will not be offered if there is a problematic driver? SO, will it actually tell me which one? Knowing Microsoft, it won't.

Yeah, suuurrreee I'll recommend vista to my clients. No way, I've got better things to do than to listen to them wine.


RE: RTM?
By Targon on 3/17/2008 12:34:31 PM , Rating: 5
You need to treat Vista 64 bit with extra care because driver support will not be very good for a while yet.

Note that Windows XP 64 bit had very little driver support. It took six to eight months after launch for the 32 bit drivers for Vista to really get stable, with a few companies really lagging. Vista 64 bit support will lag, but at least is moving forward. By the time Windows 7 is released, the 64 bit support SHOULD be solid.

The fact that you jumped on the 64 bit version(when you need to ask for it from most companies) shows you SHOULD be ready to handle this sort of issue. You knew going in that you might run into problems that the 32 bit version does not have. So, blame the hardware companies if 64 bit drivers don't work properly for you, not Microsoft.


RE: RTM?
By sprockkets on 3/17/2008 5:27:47 PM , Rating: 2
I agree with you. But just read this website, oh no, anandtech.com, and they are saying all computers should use it now.

Good thing I have both, legally.

BUT, the driver that I am talking about IS Microsoft's. It is a USB human interface device. This is a Buffalo device which has drivers built into a flash memory part of it. It failed to detect it beyond being a USB Human interface device, and not the network adapter it is.

I already know about the 64 bit debacle. Of course, while you cannot compare the issue with Apple, they will happily gloat about how they do not have a 64 bit issue.


RE: RTM?
By Etsp on 3/17/2008 12:59:21 PM , Rating: 4
The constant churning of the HDD is really the biggest complaint against Vista that I have. I have already turned off the indexing service and set all my drives to not index, and it persists.

As far as I can tell, it is supposed to be a background service, but on hard drives, "backround" is way different than on a processor. Hard drives have a huge amount of latency, and so switching back and forth between this service and what you want to do causes some serious slow downs. So as a background service it should only be running when the system is completely idle.

If anyone has any idea what it is that is doing it (not the indexing service) then please let me know.


RE: RTM?
By aguilpa1 on 3/17/2008 1:52:52 PM , Rating: 2
I also have Vista 64, however, i don't use it preferring to dual boot into old XP Pro. I have yet to find anything in Vista that I can't generally do faster on XP, hence no point in switching.

RE: your drive churning. Have you tried run msconfig from the run command. Its still there. You can then see what all processes are currently running and how much CPU they are using. You can then narrow down your culprit. Generally constant drive crunching is as you already checked, indexing, antivirus scans, auto drive defrags and if you have very little memory, auto windows updates and installation will do that.


RE: RTM?
By AlphaVirus on 3/17/2008 1:57:48 PM , Rating: 2
Check your Task Manager, you might have a task running for certain softwares. Also if you have programs such as DiskKeeper, Mcafee, Norton, or any program that has "real time scanning" then this could be your 'problem'.

I would suggest reading some of this so you can get a better idea of how to find whats accessing your harddrive.
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11...

Once you get accustomed to the TM, then you will be able to disable certain services that Vista has enabled but are pointless and you can find processes that you might have running by accident. It takes a lot of time but I would suggest googling every task you have running so that you can get an idea of whats running in the background.

Also depending on how much ram you have, your hard drive could be transfering paging files.


RE: RTM?
By sprockkets on 3/17/2008 5:37:16 PM , Rating: 4
So instead of waiting for a program to open, we now wait for it to boot up, take forever to load, then open quickly.

Like I said, Linux does this too, but the hdd does not churn after a few minutes after boot. On this new install, it does for days.

If they fix it, fine. But, moving the time to open a program to the beginning of boot doesn't help at all.

I will say though, after a while, it does go away, and it just works. But, XP works quick upon install and it loads programs quick as well :).

BTW, the only program I installed on the computer was VLC, Radeon drivers, and nothing else.


RE: RTM?
By arazok on 3/17/2008 2:49:39 PM , Rating: 2
It's superFetch, and it's your friend. Probably the best addition to Vista of them all...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv...


RE: RTM?
By walk2k on 3/17/2008 3:23:33 PM , Rating: 2
Wow it still does that? I thought they would have fixed that in beta.

I tried the beta for awhile but had to delete it (a whole nother nightmare.. had to reformat the drive to get rid of it..) because of that bug. CONSTANT HDD access, day and night, 24/7.. for weeks after installing (so it wasn't just indexing, which I even tried to disable)...

If it still does that there's no way I can use Vista. Not only will it wear out my HD prematurely, all that noise gave me a headache...


RE: RTM?