Microsoft Releases Vista SP1 IT Guides, Detailed Change Log

Curious about what's in Windows Vista SP1? IT administrators sure are (and so are a lot of techno-geeks like me). To help us all out (particularly IT) in advance of the SP1 RC release this week, Microsoft has released a set of guides --- five to be exact.

The guides are:

• Deployment Guide for the RC1 Version of Windows Vista SP1
• Enterprise Guidance for Application Compatibility Testing and Windows Vista SP1
• Hotfixes and Security Updates in Windows Vista SP1
• Notable Changes in Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate
• Overview of Windows Vista SP1

I'm definitely not going to go into the list of Hotfixes and Security Updates --- the Word document covers over 70 pages.

The Notable Change document lists the "describes many of the notable changes in Windows Vista SP1, with the exception of some updates to the Windows Genuine Advantage experience which we are still developing for our customers and will be released in a later build."

This document divides the changes into different categories, including:

• Hardware Ecosystem Support and Enhancements
  
• Application Compatibility Improvements
• Reliability Improvements
• Performance and Power Consumption Improvements
• Security Improvements
• Support for New Technologies and Standards
• Desktop Administration and Management
• Setup and Deployment Improvements
• Interoperability Improvements
• Feature or API Changes
• General Improvements and Enhancements
• Windows Vista Alignment with Windows Server 2008

Want more details? The Notable Changes document is 17 pages long, as is the Overview document. It'll make some good reading material for insomniacs. I suggest you start downloading from the link above.

But one thing I've been looking for are performance improvements in network and USB copying. This has been a sore point since Vista first released, and I had to install a hotfix to make it liveable right out of the box. According to the release notes, local file copies should be 25% faster, while remote copies should be 50% faster. Whew.

Of course, we know based on tests, that Vista SP1 is still no speed demon. We'll see when we all get our hands on it. Me, I'll wait for the release, not the RC1 build.