August 2007 - Posts
It is not the first OS service pack ever, but is eagerly awaited by many as a panacea to all Vista ills. It won't be, of course, any more than Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP1 was. Windows 2000 saw four service packs in it's life, and so far there have been two for XP with a final 'roll up' SP3 appearing at the same time as Vista SP1.
Service Packs roll up all previous updates into one neat package, and include as many fixes and patches as have been found to be benign. Before release, the SP has to be tested for integrity and to ensure that there is as close to a 100% chance that it will install for all users. It also has to be incorporated into the original RTM release. Even after installing SP1, other updates will follow closely on its heels, simply because testing and setting up the distribution network to get it out all takes time and, in that time, other issues will have surfaced.
Service Packs have lost some of their original thunder, updates being delivered monthly now. There are a few months to go before the SP1 release, so there is no way out of waiting more than a few minutes for all of the present and future releases to do their stuff. For those with high end computers and fast broadband internet access, life is not so bad. Unfortunately, many still don't have high speed internet, cheap or otherwise, especially where distance, hills and trees get in the way.
For more on Vista SP1, click on the URL:
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/08/29/announcing-the-windows-vista-service-pack-1-beta.aspx
Bear in mind that SP1 will not fix problems such as older printer/scanner control programs that were written pre-Vista. The hardware manufacturers are responsible, and any decision to supply free updates will be at their discretion, and their decision will be final and binding.
For those of you still unsure about Vista, I will say this. I have been running Windows Vista Ultimate RTM since it was first released to the technical community on November 17, 2006. Before that, I was running the beta forms. I was lucky in that all of my hardware was recognised, other than a small problem with it seeing my printer as a usable device. The RTM release saw everything working fine.
I do have critical information and data on this computer, but I do not run any seriously mission critical applications. My work would not be too seriously affected in the time that it would take me to re-instate everything. Where you do have mission critical operations, run Vista alongside them. It has come a long way since release, and gets better all of the time. It is not as bad as some would have you believe, and it is the way forward.
The nVidia video driver situation appears to be finally getting 'beta' with this latest release. I ran Age of Empires III last night, and while I did not notice more detail necessarily, the game ran smoother than it has done since making the transition from XP to Vista.
I still only get a 3.5 game performance rating from my GeForce 6600, but it is good enough for me presently. I may even reload CFS 3 if only to see if it too runs better. My flying ability is not governed by video performance, I can assure you. I am no natural flyer and, aided and abetted by a cheap joystick, I never last too long 'up there' even with the game set for invincible. There should be a part where the FAA/CAA come in to investigate the crashes, but whether I could take the insults from the investigators is open to conjecture.
I get a 5.9 performance rating for Aero, so I know at least that my video card is not the bottle neck when the machine as a whole stutters and hops along as if it was injured.
This beta driver also has 3D overrides, so when a listed game is run, the video settings are optimized for it. Even Adobe Reader 8 has a setting. Unfortinately, I don't run Adobe Reader 8, preferring the much trimmer and infinitely faster 'Foxit'.
For a while now, nVidia drivers have been able to cope with 'Dual view', but there is still no ability to have a different background on each screen. I cheated and used the 30 day trial version of Ultramon. Presently uninstalled, I will only use it again if I decide to change the backgrounds for something else. Sorry Ultramon, but Vista has native support for moving windows from one screen to another. All I want is basic control, and the ability to have two different backgrounds.
Anyway, I have noticed nothing untoward having installed the drivers which keeps me on the happy side.
Just recently, I noticed that sound through my speakers and headset was a little 'buzzy'. I don't remember doing anything to make it so, no updates or anything like that but, suddenly listening to music was not a pleasureable experience. So I set off in search of drivers.
The RealTek website is presently sporting version 6243_Vista_APO which, if downloaded and run, should clear up your 'buzzy' sound just as it did mine.
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=23&PFid=23&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#AC
There are two Vista updates available now in the wild that, at the time of writing, have yet to appear in WU. The two KB's, 938194 and 938979, cover performance and stability issues, one in particular being file copy/transfer speeds across local drives and networks.
Re. copying files, the situation has improved somewhat. My timings are based upon copying the same block of 55 video clips totalling 2.16gb to a second drive on the local computer, and to a drive in one of the other computers attached to the home network. The drives are all WD 80gb IDE types.
Drive to drive (local) = 1 minute 45 seconds.. Drive to drive (wired network) = 5 minutes 05 seconds
There is no doubt that the times are an improvement and, while I have nothing with which to compare, I am quite happy with the results. Unfortunately, I no longer have time for a coffee and a couple of cigarettes, or should I say 'no excuse for a coffee and a couple of cigarettes'.
The update has improved the time, but it has done little for the 'time' that Vista told me that the process would take. Starting off with a brisk 1 minute and some, the message quickly doused my spirits as it climbed to 3 days 6 hours, finally topping out at 7 days 9 hours. This was more like the time it used to take.
These updates cover performance and stability within Vista but stability has not been a problem for me, so I wait with interest to see what stability improvements show.
To be honest, any improvement is welcome and, hopefully, these two updates will take away something from the many issues highlighted by trolls in the Vista NNTP support groups and most especially the Internet press, it being the source of most Vista FUD.
I will not say that Vista is perfect, but it is getting there, and it will in time prove to be a worthy sucessor to XP. Now, it we could only get decent video drivers................