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................