Mark Gilbert’s Blog

Windows Vista SP1 has been RTM earlier this week, but reports are now coming out that SP1 could cause more issues for users than it solves. Microsoft have admitted that there are some new driver issues in SP1, drivers that worked on the original Vista build may not work in SP1. Mike Nash who is charge of Vista product management was quoted as saying;

“Our beta testing identified an issue with a small set of device drivers, these drivers do not follow our guidelines for driver installation and as a result, some beta participants who were using Windows Vista and updated to Service Pack 1 reported issues with these devices.”

Basically with the changes to the core of Vista being brought about in SP1 drivers may cease to function correctly. Before SP1 is installed it will check for the drivers that have known issues and not offer SP1 to those users with the offending drivers, although Nash remained tight lipped at present as to what those drivers were.

This would not be the first time a major SP release has caused problems for Windows users, think back to the XP SP2 release a few years ago.

Cheers

With Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 both on the horizon people have started benchmarking the two. The Florida based software development company Devil Mountain Software showed that XP still outperforms Vista with the new service packs applied to both OS’s.

Apparently Vista took 80 seconds compared to 35 seconds for XP SP3. The SP1 update for Vista made little or no difference to speed, SP3 for XP on the other hand gave a 10% performance increase over an XP SP2 machine.

So it would seem that a year after launch Vista is yet to live up to it’s hype. It is still outclassed by the 6 years old Windows XP and many people simply want nothing to do with it.

Well 2008 may bring new things for Vista, or it may simply be more of the same crap that has plagued the OS since launch, time will, as always, tell.

Cheers

Due to some kind of cock-up Microsoft have managed to inadvertently send the Windows Desktop Search program out through Windows update. What’s more it was pushed out to be installed through Software Update Services even if the application had never been installed before and SUS was set to only update apps.This obviously has created a lot of problems for many people, since when Windows Desktop Search is installed it will automatically begin indexing the machine’s hard drive drive contents slowing the PC down. Not so bad you might think but when you’re a business who needs machines to work quickly at the start of a working day then it does become an issue.So well done Microsoft, you’ve managed to foul up yet another Windows update casting even more doubt onto the service.

Cheers

Well, I never thought I’d see the day, Apple’s Safari browser is now available for Windows as well as OS X. You can download a beta of it from Apple’s site.The reasons they have done it are obvious, with iTunes and iPod already a huge hit among Windows users a browser is the next logical step, maybe, or maybe I’m just barking.Either way I shall be installing it at work and having a play with the Windows version later.

Cheers