Vista Service Pack 1: Things Microsoft forgot to fix
Tags: desktops, hard drive, windows vista, flip
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 became available yesterday and the entire Interweb is talking about it. Some are saying SP1 improves Vista's general meh-diocrity, while others, including our brothers and sisters at CNET.com, are saying it's not all that.
We're inclined to agree with our Yank brethren. Microsoft's done a decent job with Vista SP1, but it could have done so much more. Don't give us that rubbish about it only being an incremental improvement -- Microsoft threw so much into XP SP2 that it was virtually a whole new operating system.
With that in mind, we've come up with a bunch of things we think should have been included with Vista SP1, and things that could help improve the Windows Vista user experience on the whole. Some of these things may happen with the advent of Vista SP2 -- just after 633 Pig Squadron takes off and Satan starts his own Mr Plow franchise. But we love to fantasise.
Multiple Desktops
You get it in Ubuntu, you get it in OS X Leopard, so why can't you get it out of the box with Windows Vista? The ability to have multiple desktops or spaces, each themed with a specific set of application types can help improve productivity and reduce the amount of clutter. Nobody likes to have a desktop full of icons, and nobody likes trawling their mental Rolodex to remember where they left something. You wouldn't eat, sleep and wash in the same room, so why treat your PC's desktop in the same way?
Better Flip 3D
Flip 3D provided the 'wow' factor Microsoft needed to make Vista interesting. But now all the hype has died down, it's clear that nobody uses the thing. Why bother, when Alt-Tab works better anyway? The problem with Flip 3D is that it can only show a limited number of windows at any one time. Plus the windows at the rear of the flip stack are virtually useless, since you can only see 20-25 per cent of the window. We think we've probably used Flip 3D twice. Once was to take a screen shot of it in action, and the other was to impress a girl.
Better file previews
Microsoft got it half right with its file-preview system. Vista lets you preview some of the contents of a sub-directory by placing thumbnails on the directory icon. And different file types have different icons. But is that the best they could do? If there was some way of previewing documents before you open them, a la Leopard's QuickLook feature, we'd be less likely to open the wrong document by mistake, and we wouldn't clog up our 'recent items' list with things we never meant to open.
Visual backup/restore
Why Microsoft gave us such a half-baked solution for such an important area is beyond us. Yes, Vista lets us create backups of our entire PC, or even just files we specify, but that's really not enough in this day and age. Anyone who's spent 3 hours on the phone to their grandmother trying to explain how to recover a lost file will tell you how inadequate the current solution is. How about a visual representation of the state of your computer on any given day? How about the ability to recover lost files just by typing in a search term? How about accessing lost files directly from the application you last viewed them in? How about ripping off Time Machine? There's no shame in it.
Some speed, already!
We've always been concerned about some aspects of Vista's performance. We've learned that file copying and networking can be painfully slow, so we were rather hoping Vista SP1 would speed things up a bit. And it does -- sorta, kida, ish. But not really. CNET.com's lab monkeys have learned that moving files around on the same hard drive is a teeny bit quicker, but writing files to an external hard drive is notably slower with SP1. Boot up and shut down times were about the same, and battery life in laptops was virtually identical, too. Call us greedy, but we were expecting more. Vista was supposed to have started the 'wow' not the 'meh', remember? -Rory Reid
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Rich TrenholmWed 19 March, 2008 5:28pm
Or just hit the spacebar in OSX Leopard. Mac-tastic.
AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 10:06pm
So, essentially what you're saying here is that Mac OS has a load of features that you'd like in Vista. Kind of gives the other side to your argument in the Crave podcast a little while ago that Mac OS was not as good as MS...
Commence flame war! ;=)
AnonymousThu 20 March, 2008 7:38am
No problems when update to SP1 also it gave me 54GB back to my hard drive free space also very fast boot up that about few seconds (no more than 12 seconds) also much fast to update my Kaspersky I.S.7 and CounterSpy V2 database (older Vista was much longer but SP1 is much quicker). I would say SP1 is much better and suggest people to update but it depend on their hardwares, i download 121.5mb that took slighty longer to download and installed -- it not too bad.
AnonymousThu 20 March, 2008 1:29pm
Ooh ooh you forgot one other thing in the service pack...
A decent operating system! Come now even us die hard Softie's all know what those fruit fans and penguin fans have been saying since day one...that Vista just isn't any good. I mean really it's really quite bad. I just wonder if we could ever admit it in public!
AnonymousThu 20 March, 2008 9:27pm
Unfortunately, Vista spends a lot of resources on so-called digital rights management, which means your system will run more slowly. That can't be helped, as long as DRM remains Microsoft's main priority. For those who prefer a system that is tailored to their needs, as opposed to the Recording Industry, there are other alternatives.
AnonymousMon 24 March, 2008 11:20pm
We gamers need to use Windows Vista...
It's overpriced, it's not as clever as Leopard, it's SLOW, but, It's Got irectX 10, and, because of that, some great games. If I were not a gamer, I'd buy a mac...
Hopefully things will change and maybe we will see games and much more apps for mac.
AnonymousTue 25 March, 2008 3:16am
el discapacitado no puede pedir acceder a un softward gratis para poder navegar sin tantos traspies
estoy cansado de borrar los programas y volver a cargarlos pierdo mucha informacion
discapacitado sin dos piernas y medio brazo
AnonymousTue 25 March, 2008 9:23pm
After update to vista service pack 1 my laptop does not switch off, all programs and windows does close down but not the laptop, I got to do it manually, keeping the power button down until is off. Acer Aspire 5622. Anyone got a clue?
AnonymousSat 29 March, 2008 12:25am
the service pack totally nacked my desktop had to do a factory restore lost everything whata load of rubbish couldnt get internet couldnt load programmes pulled my hair out wont download anymore windows update cant trust microsoft
AnonymousTue 1 April, 2008 7:34pm
Service Pack 1 really frustrated me by changing things that caused me hours of grief. Firstly it changed Windows Explorer somehow. This caused the icons on my desktop to disappear soon after I clicked on any icon that opened with Windows Explorer. It then closed that window very soon after leaving me staring at the desktop bagkground picture only.
The next, although slightly less annoying, change was that all the links, and the folders that contained the links, in the favourites (or favorites as the yanks who wrote Vista have labelled it) were removed from Internet Explorer. This wasn't too much of a problem, as I had saved them on an external hard drive.
Lastly four dll files have been deleted. These were located in : C\users\*******\appdata\local\temp\ -------. The ******* relate to my name and the -------- relate to the missing file names. This causes four warning pop-ups to appear on my desktop soon after logging in. Ok, so they close down without a problem but why are they appearing?. I am now in the process of finding out what they were to see if I need them and, if I don't, how to stop them appearing.
I'm no computer expert but, I know how to find my way around and solve most problems that occur with my computer. Many people may not know how to, or may not want to attempt to solve these Service Pack related problems and other problems they have and so they end up having to pay people to sort out Microsoft's mess that was caused by hastily releasing a Service Pack to fix the problems that the hastily released Windows Vista OS had and probably still has along with a few more listed here.
AnonymousFri 4 April, 2008 8:22pm
Probably in the minority here, but I didn't notice any difference - for better or for worse. I have Vista Ultimate anyway, which seems to render me immune to a lot of the problems that people who have cut-down versions have, and so the service pack just seems to have tweaked IE a little, which I don't use all that often anyway. I also have a reasonably new-build PC under Vista, which helps enormously - perhaps a lot of problems with Vista can be put down to poor hardware choices in some PCs ? ...and thus the service pack just exacberates those existing problems.
AnonymousThu 17 April, 2008 2:22am
i like it! my laptop is faster to boot and shut down way faster 2, boot at least 5 times to see the real difference, maybe I'm gonna be flamed, but i think Microsoft has done a great job here! p.s file copying is faster as well!
AnonymousMon 21 April, 2008 4:15am
To the commenter above, C\users\*******\appdata\local\TEMP\ is a folder that... contains TEMPORARY files! It is not Vista causing these warnings; check your installed programs to see why they are installing needed files in a temporary folder.
AnonymousMon 21 April, 2008 11:09pm
I was wondering, i listen to music a lot on my PC and download the songs i like from CD's i have (not internet); however, the songs dont always play right and seem to skip in different places every time the song is played.
Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Does the service pack fix it?
Thanks, help is appreciated
AnonymousSat 26 April, 2008 6:02am
it boots faster runs faster but games are WAY slower. used to run half life with full graphics and with great FPS, but now need it at the minimum for acceptable FPS. I'm a huge gamer and this really pisses me off.
AnonymousTue 6 May, 2008 2:32am
Upgraded to SP1 for Vista, and now my computer takes 5 minutes to boot each time! What the hell!
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AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 4:21pm
Better file previews
If you Click on Organize - Layout - Preview Pane, you can view doc without opening them