Archive for the ‘Vista’ Category
- In: Ballmer | Microsoft | MVP | Tells | Vista | Windows XP Home | Xp"Work in Progress"
- Leave a Comment
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reflects on Windows Vista
Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system has been on the market for consumers for a little over a year now. During that time, the operating system has seen its fair share of both praise and criticism.
As is customary with Windows operating systems that have been on the market for roughly a year, Microsoft recently released the first Service Pack for Vista. Service Pack 1 (SP1) addressed a number of shortcomings with the operating system and rolled in a number of hotfixes and patches that have been released via Windows Update over the past year.
Now that Vista has had some time to establish itself in the marketplace and receive a fresh boost of energy with SP1, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is now reflecting on the operating system.
“Windows Vista: A work in progress,” said Ballmer to a crowd of Microsoft MVPs in Seattle. “A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on?”
Ballmer went on to add, “It turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting. We can’t ever let that happen again.”
Ballmer also noted that there are plenty of happy customers of the Windows Vista operating system as well as Windows XP. He remarked that he has received emails from staunch supporters of the Windows XP operating system, but declined to give any indications that Microsoft would go any further than its intention to provide Windows XP Home to ultra-low-cost PCs (ULPCs) until June 2010.
- In: -- | Guide | InformationWeek | SP1 | Survival | Vista | Windows | Windows Vista
- Leave a Comment
Here’s how to get ready for Windows Vista Service Pack 1, due from Microsoft in March, with its much needed performance enhancements, security upgrades, and compatibility revisions.
After a little more than a year in the wild, it’s high time for Windows Vista to receive the service pack it deserves. While Service Pack 1 won’t change the way Windows Vista looks or feels, for the most part, it will improve many things about the way it runs, based on both Microsoft’s internal testing and the feedback of tens of thousands of users.
 |
|
 Keep an eye out in case the process stalls out or fails. |
|
| (click for image gallery) |
SP1 has been both heavily anticipated and badly needed. While the gold release of Vista was for the most part solid enough to use as a production system, there were still many frustrating rough edges.
In the light of these problems, one of the most commonly repeated canards about using Vista was, “I’ll just wait until SP1 comes out.” Well, SP1 is now almost out. A release candidate, which is the version we tested, was made available towards the end of last year. More recently, Microsoft officially released SP1 to manufacturing in February to TechNet and MSDN customers. The actual, wide public release to users at large is expected sometime in March.
What’s In The Box?
Vista Service Pack 1 is a cumulative collection of all the fixes — performance enhancements, security updates, and compatibility revisions — published or created for Vista since its release. As with an artist’s greatest-hits collection, some of it is “previously released material” — but that absolutely doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply SP1. Otherwise you won’t get the full benefit of all the changes made.
Keep in mind that SP1 will be large — quite necessarily so. The standalone installer for SP1 will weigh in at anywhere from 450 Mbytes (for the five-language edition) to 550 Mbytes (the all-language edition), and you’ll need at least 5 Gbytes of temporary space on your system to perform the install. Most PCs capable of running Vista right now should not have a problem sparing that much room, but if you do, then a cleanup — or maybe even a new hard drive, if it’s already time for one — is in order. (Note that there are ways to ameliorate both the storage and download requirements; see “Express” on page 3 for details.)
Valleywag - valleywag.wordpress.com 
Recent Comments