RSSMicrosoft Reminds: No Vista SP1 This Year
By Nate Mook | Published July 19, 2007, 12:19 PM
Following reports that Microsoft would deliver a beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this week, well before the originally-stated November date, the company has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement to quell any expectation, saying no changes have been made to the release timeframe.
The first news of a Vista SP1 beta arriving this week came from Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley, who cited sources that said a release would be made to a group of select testers. Although Foley never specified how widespread the beta would be, and never characterized it as a public release, the news quickly circled the Web.
It's no surprise talk of Vista SP1 has spurred excitement; Microsoft has remained mum on the subject and many customers are awaiting the first service pack before moving to the new operating system. It may be just a group of patches, but SP1 represents the first "tried and true" version of Vista for some.
Foley's post, titled "Vista SP1 beta 1 to launch in mid-July" also stated that, "We are now in the under-promise and over-deliver era at Microsoft," referring to Microsoft's comments on Vista SP1 beta coming in November. Those comments came in a response to a complaint from Google; Microsoft promised to make changes to the way searches are handled.
With mid-July quickly passing, Microsoft decided it was time to clear the air. Although beta code may be made available this week to a very small group of testers, Vista SP1 Beta 1 is not on the way, and will not arrive anytime soon.
"There will be a Windows Vista service pack and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year. Service packs are part of the traditional software lifecycle -- they’re something we do for all Microsoft products as part of our commitment to continuous improvement, and providing early test builds is a standard practice that helps us incorporate customer feedback and improve the overall quality of the product," Microsoft said in a statement.
Although it wouldn't explicitly said so, Microsoft's plans put a final release of Vista SP1 -- what customers are actually waiting for, not a beta -- sometime next year. And in the meantime, the company is busy telling customers they shouldn't wait at all.
"Since Windows Vista launched, we have continued working with partners to improve overall device coverage and application compatibility. There are now more than 2.1 million supported devices and more than 2,000 logoed applications for Windows Vista. We think customers will have a great experience using Windows Vista today," Microsoft added.
Foley responded in a blog post Thursday, stating that Microsoft should stop allowing misinformation to spread about its plans. "If Microsoft is going to such great lengths to keep the status and feature set of a service pack secret, what will they do when it’s finally time to start talking about Windows Seven?" she queried. "Will wiretaps be involved? Scouring employees’ phone records for calls to unapproved numbers? Logging people’s private IM sessions?"
But if you're a conspiracy theorist, you might buy into the argument that such misinformation was intentional on Microsoft's part. Before the 2002 Super Bowl, a number of reporters received multiple confirmations that Apple would run a one-time commercial advertising a new phone. In the end, the reporters held off, saying the story just didn't feel right even with sourcing.
It turns out that Apple was looking to snuff out leaks.
Vista is a terrible product at this stage... This is not opinion its fact. Deal with it Microsoft Fan Boys...
It will get better with SP's but releasing an OS in this state is poor form... even by Microsoft's incredibly low standards.
Even though im a Fedora user I still use XP a great deal and find it to be a fantastic product... It has taken a while for XP to take shape and turn into the product it is today.
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|This is not opinion its fact.
No, actually, that's pretty much the definition of opinion, but thanks for playing.
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|There is no winning this argument with PC-Tool he has "Vista is Gods Gift" Tattooed on his tool. LOL Which means thats must be one hell of a tool. lol
But I agree with him on this point. Its opinion. it just happens to be a widely shared opinion no matter what numbers MS pushes out. Units sold to Vendors do not a Installation make. Otherwise there would not be such a HUGE demand for simplified Downgrade rights on OEMs. Which Microsoft has begrudgingly agreed too after enormous pressure.
However its worth noting that All those "DOWNGRADED" Licenses, still count as a Vista installation to MS even though its Windows XP MCE.
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|guess my copy is gonna sit on back burner of dual boot for a bit longer then
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|Games I play will not support Vista till SP1.
Vista has clucky DX9 fps compared to super under dog XP. DX10 has fell flat on its face as has so far Games For Windows and Ultimate Extras. Only thing this year that I see even come close for needing Vista is Age Of Conan. May even wait till Hell Gate London before upgrading to Vista. Guess Microsoft will have to wait alittle(alot?) longer to get my money.
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|Microsoft reminds: "You'll have to keep beta-testing our bloated piece of crap for the entire year, we won't fix any of it's numerous issues until next year.
In the meanwhile, we arranged it that you can occupy yourself with trying to get your devices to run with the crappy drivers 8where they exist at all) and the severely lacking application compatibility. YNow isn't it nice of us that we saw to it that you have plenty to do just so you don't get bored?"
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|salut ca va bien?
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|What?
You know we don't speak Spanish.
That's in the other room. :p
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|The response was in French.
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|Watch Blades of Glory.
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|The only problems with Vista are the lack of good quality drivers. This is not the fault of Microsoft, as they can only do so much, fault the hardware companies you support for buggy video drivers as an example.
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|So SP 1 for Vista won't include a new kernel after all. It's just "a group of patches". I wonder just where some of you got the idea that SP 1 for Vista would include a new kernel. This is like saying the version of Vista on store shelves is nothing more than Vista RC 3.
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|I'm not sure but I remember hearing something about Microsoft planning to recompile most of windows using their .net framework to increase performance and reduce cpu/memory usage. Technically new kernel, but still using basically the same code. though as I heard it they scrapped the plan shortly before vista's release because they weren't confident in the reliability of .net...
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|Fine, no SP this year? No Vista until next 2 years for Corps (if and only if the SP make make the beast work). MS will be pushed to extend their XP licensing until the damn bloated thing works decently, or Windows 7 arises. Whatever happen first.
MS fans, please do not quote me saying "Vista work great for me..." I swear I believe you (it is just you did not tried enough).
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|"(it is just you did not tried enough)"
What?? Atleast I can make sentences that make sense.
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|I can't imagine what sp1 will do, most likely I bet it will be nothing more than a rollup of all fixes thus far.
I mean didn't microsoft at one point say sp's are history thanks to the integrated windows update tool now?
Unless of course it will be similiar to how sp1 and sp2 changed vista for security and to make the doj and the courts happy.
I use vista and I typically don't have any issues. Drivers are beginning to mature which they always will be, heck even xp being out for liek 6 years now has driver refresh from all the big companies.
vista is here to stay, we can like it or not. I do think microsoft takes advantage of their market share even to this day. If microsoft had 50/50 competition think vista would of taken 5 years? Think they would of broke every single application and drivers that were on the market? Heck no. They would of been done for. But once again that is the result of no competition.
I really do wonder what kind of world it would be right now if Microsoft would of been broken up in 2 os companies and 1 application company. I can't even imagine. Windows would prob be 100 dollars for the ultimate version and we would have a new os upgrade every year or two with massive innovation.
But that would be the twilight zone eh?
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|Well, MS seems to be content with a POS OS. Sorry MS, i'll stay on the greener side of the fence.
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|I think its really just companies trying to sabotage Microsoft by not making any drivers. Sure some companies can get a lil peeved about the closed kernel but it still does not stop them from making drivers.
but for companies to wait for an un-needed SP1 that will fix nothing because there are not problems, is pretty stupid. The only thing they're gonna do is get rid of a search bar and probably add some cool new tricks to the OS, I doubt anything detrimental is going to change with the OS through SP1, If it aint broke why fix it?
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|"I think its really just companies trying to sabotage Microsoft by not making any drivers."
Um.. how about the damn drivers for the Linux fellows? Winmodems anyone?
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|hmmm... i'm a computer nerd... (know all previous windows versions like the back of my hand) been using vista for about 1 month now...
i don't really see any major "problem" that a service pack can fix...
the main thing that sucks about vista is that it's a resource hog...
I'm running vista x64 with 4GB ram, E6600 and works beautifully.... but on slower machines, i don't know... it probably sucks a*s...
so yeah... service pack 1... is it going to reduce resource usage? maybe, if it disables indexing, windows defender, sidebar and aero style by default...
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|In the history of Microsoft--or at least since I've used their products (lol, big difference I suppose)--nota one service pack has ever improved performance from the previous one on the same machine. It ADDS code, so naturally it makes things a little bloatier. Now, some very specific configurations that were slow due to a specific windows bug may be faster due to the memory leak being patched, but that's about it.
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|I also am running the 64-bit version of Vista
with 4GB of ram and the Intel 6600 C2D. They all match perfectly.
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|what peripherals do you have? got drivers for that SCSI card you need? what about the scanner you might use?
oh, SP1 is going to have to remove the search engines fighting when you install something on a Vista machine.
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|Given the historic timeframe MS employs for private, public beta trials of OS service packs, I would seriously doubt that SP1 would be "out" this year if beta 1 is not out already. Lately, they've been shooting for a Beta1, Beta2, CTP/RC (3-step) release process. Each taking a month or more. They don't typically release OS SP's in late December either.
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|Bad news for Microsoft, since a lot of companies won't commit to Vista until they have that first Service Pack in hand. For admins, Microsoft's first release of anything is still beta. And yes, even GNU/Linux has better driver support than Vista to this day! Jeebus.
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|I'm no champion of Vista, but GNU/Linux lacks as many drivers as Vista for some specific types of devices. You can't generalize like that and remain accurate. I agree with your first and second sentences however. Very apropos.
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|All I know is that among six distros and four computers, two of which are new, GNU/Linux has drivers for all of them including several printers, two new monitors, three new videocards. On the other hand, Vista doesn't have any drivers for the exact same market-leading devices. Vista fails to either provide drivers for the vast majority of new printers, monitors, and videocards currently on the market, or so far to get hardware manufacturers to write for it. HP alone has said it won't bother writing many drivers until SP1 is released. Most of Vista's support is old hardware.
I'll throw in: unlike like GNU/Linux, Vista doesn't like to allow virtualization either. That alone cripples a substantial amount of networked hardware sharing. It's a shame that Microsoft is letting Ubuntu kick its butt in this extremely important area.
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|And i think most will wait until SP2....
Plus, i suspect sp1 or 2 will 'break' a lot of software.
64 bit gets delayed even more...
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|That's unfortunate. 90% of the vista complaints on the forums are fixed withen days of them being mentioned, and 9.99% of the 10% not fixed are driver issues where the OEM refuses to spend its time updating the drivers.
Complaints of lack of DirectSound support to allow eax effects? Solved in February: OpenAL solves that issue.
Complaints of faulty DirectX 10 video drivers? Got betas for those back in March, finals released in June.
Complaints about HP Director software issues? HP finally fixed that in May (along with IE7 compatibility issues too).
Problems with certain games? I have an 8800GTS video card and can play games as old as MYST from 1996, and almost every other game works the same or better due to BETTER Cool n' Quiet drivers for my Athlon 4400+ X2 CPU.
Am I an isolated success story? Maybe I am--but I haven't had one tenth the problems that I expected I would with it. Yeah, had to find a weird beta lan driver for my ULi chipset's integrated nic, I had to copy an mss32.dll file from one game to my KOTOR 2 folder for the sith lords game to work, I had to download the very latest nvidia beta drivers to gain an additional 1,450 3dmarks in 3dmark06, but all in all, it's better FOR ME right now than XP was.
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|That's the biggest bulls*** I have ever heard. *cough* Microsoft Bashing *cough*
Vista 64bit even supports my webcam that's not supported under WinXP 64bit.
Waiting for SP1 is bulls*** as well, Vista runs fine as it is now.
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|I have no intention of diving into a Linux-vs-Vista argument. I really don't care. They're just tools. I don't pray to them or attend their churches. I have both running at work and at home and there's things in each I like and don't like. Ford and Chevy. Pepsi and Coke. Whatever. Ubuntu 7.04 had a horrible time with my nVidia GeForce 7300 card, but Vista doesn't like my company's Citrix VPN client either. Both cost me time and pain. There's apps I need in Windows that do not run on Linux, not even Wine or by VMware, and there's things I hate about Vista. But like I said, they're just tools. I use whichever works for whatever my needs are at the time.
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|Yea, but you're paying Microsoft not to get the same drivers you do get with some GNU/Linux distros. Glad to know you're not a god-believer. I'm an atheist, too.
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|Ah, a meeting of the BetaNews Atheist Club? Let me join in, guys!
Anyway, for those apps which still require Windows to run, you're a lot better off getting XP than Vista. Not only that you're saving plenty money when getting it (if you don't already have XP), even XP64 has a great deal better driver and app support than Vista.
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|official quote was "No SP1 This Month." It is still due out this year, the DOJ filing said so.
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|SP1 final is not due out this year. Only the beta is due out this year. Things could change, of course, but that's the current timeframe that Microsoft isn't moving from -- at least publicly.
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|Doesn't matter what they say, it'll come out when it comes out.
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