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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.
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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.)
Windows XP SP3 Goes RTM
Posted on: April 24, 2008
- In: center | Download | Goes | Microsoft | RTM | SP3 | Windows | Windows UpdateDailyTech | Windows XP SP3 | XP
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Windows XP SP3 is finally finished
DailyTech reported last week that Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP would be released to manufacturing (RTM) on April 21. The initial reports from Neowin came true and Microsoft today officially announced SP3.
Microsoft’s Chris Keroack posted the news in the TechNet Forums:
Today we are happy to announce that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) has released to manufacturing (RTM). Windows XP SP3 bits are now working their way through our manufacturing channels to be available to OEM and Enterprise customers.
We are also in the final stages of preparing for release to the web (i.e. you!) on April 29th, via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Online documentation for Windows XP SP3, such as Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and the Microsoft TechNet Windows XP TechCenter, will be updated then. For customers who use Windows XP at home, Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer.
Thanks to everyone here who installed the public betas — you not only gave us detailed feedback but also helped each other out with timely troubleshooting. Through the beta program we found several important issues and were able to confirm some essential fixes. We couldn’t have done this without you.
We will still be monitoring this forum during the next few weeks in case you have more feedback about the release of Windows XP SP3.
Windows Connect and MSDN/TechNet Subscribers should be able to download soon. The public will have to wait until April 29, however, to download the update from the Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update.
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