You may have heard that Vista SP1 beta is now available to the general public meaning every Vista user on the planet and you may have some questions about it. How long does it take? How hard is it? How many reboots are there? I’ll try to answer some of those questions with our guide to installing Vista SP1.
It’s finally here, Vista SP1 public beta has finally hit Windows Update but it’s not as easy as simply going to Windows Update and downloading SP1.
Microsoft is at it again, trying to convince businesses and some users alike that Vista SP1 does not have that many changes and it is not worth holding off your upgrade.
Most users of Vista won’t deny that it is slower than running XP, even on a comparable system. Microsoft was supposed to fix those problems with service pack 1 but benchmarks have shown that Vista SP1 isn’t any faster than a vanilla install of Vista and might be slightly slower.
You will either love or hate the new start menu of Vista and you will either love or hate Vista itself, there isn’t much middle ground here. The only thing you can do about Vista is roll it back to XP (or install XP over Vista) which may not be much help for some of you but it is possible to do something about the new start menu if you don’t like it.
Microsoft promised a version of SP1 would be released to the public before the end of the year and ready or not, next week every “average Joe” user will have the ability to install it.
Some businesses have decided to delay rolling out Windows Vista until late 2008 or 2009 which is understandable considering the effort that must be put in to hardware and software before making the move. But, some have decided that it might be best to skip Vista entirely and wait for Windows 7.
Some custom system builders have a little bit of a problem with Vista, no one wants to buy it but it is included with new computers but that doesn’t stop people from wiping it with Windows XP. They may not be able to keep customers as Vista users but have come up with an idea to move those computers preinstalled with Vista.
A lot of news regarding Vista SP1 has been floating around for the last week or so and there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. Vista SP1 has reached the RC (release candidate) stage and the revised code is shipping out to 15,000 beta testers.
Microsoft is still preparing Vista SP1 though a public beta before the end of the year is not out of the question. Vista SP1 will loosen WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) restrictions for the operating system. WGA is the DRM tool responsible for checking if Windows is a genuine copy and if not, forces you to activate or put up with reduced functionality mode.
Vista is harder to counterfeit than Windows XP and it is not sold without a license key whereas some volume copies of Windows XP were sold without a key or all had the same key with unlimited uses. Vista is also harder to trick into thinking it has been activated, though it’s not impossible.
While Vista SP1 is still on the horizon for most users, Microsoft is planning a few things for it that weren’t previously known. There are several hacks that allow pirates to run Vista without an activation code, with the release of SP1 that will be coming to an end.
While businesses and corporate entities may have little interest in using either Vista or Mac OSX, both are gaining popularity and market share but only in the area related to home or home office use which is both good and bad.
There are a lot of video, movie and clip sites out there and searching them individually can be a pain, downloading the clips to your computer can be even more of a pain, that’s where ClipFinder comes in.
Believe it or not there are people out there running Vista and enjoying their experience. But that may be short lived if some predictions come true. McAfee analysts are expecting malware attacks on Vista to increase next year as it will move past 10% market share.
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