Microsoft Corp. has made the final version of Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) available to customers who want it now via its Download Center and Windows Update.

The vendor is still recommending that most consumers wait until mid-April when SP1 will start being pushed out through Automatic Updates, since that will make the whole download process easier for them, said Elliot Katz, product manager for Windows Client with Microsoft Canada Co. in Mississauga, Ont. However, "tech enthusiasts" can get the update now by running Windows Update, which will automatically determine if SP1 is appropriate for their PC. Business customers wanting to install SP1 on more than one PC can go to the Download Center, he said.

In his Windows Vista blog, Nick White, Vista product manager for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, said that if customers do not see SP1 listed when they run Windows Update, this could be due to one of eight reasons. One of them is that the customer has not yet installed all the prerequisite packages necessary for SP1. To install them, the user must visit the Windows Update control panel and click on "check for updates," White said. Katz added that for customers that choose to wait for SP1 to download via Auto Update, all of those prerequisite installations will be automatically pushed down to them before they can install SP1.

In a previous blog entry announcing the release to manufacturing (RTM) of SP1, White mentioned some conflicts SP1 was experiencing with a small number of device drivers. "These drivers do not follow our guidelines for driver installation and as a result, some beta participants who were using Windows Vista and updated to Service Pack 1 reported issues with these devices," he said. According to Katz, in most situations customers encountered slower performance on their PCs.

Microsoft has spent the last couple of months examining reports of driver problems and held off public availability of SP1 until this month, said White. "We've completed our analysis and are happy to report that many of these issues were fixed between the release candidate (RC) and the final version." The vendor has identified a small number of device drivers that may still be problematic after an update to SP1.

There's a "really easy fix" to the driver problem, said Katz. "You just uninstall the driver and reinstall it, and you're off to the races." While this solution may not pose a challenge to IT departments or tech-savvy individuals, Microsoft wants to smooth out the process for typical consumers so that they don't have to worry about the uninstall/reinstall process. "When Windows Update is run against their PC, and when we're distributing SP1 via Auto Update...if they have any of those drivers, we will not offer the (SP1) update at that time," Katz explained. "As the drivers get fixed by peripheral or hardware manufacturers, we will push notifications out to users that the drivers been fixed." When they install those fixed drivers, they will be able to install SP1 the next time Auto Update runs, he said.

SP1 addresses concerns customers raised about Vista around compatibility, performance and reliability, said Katz. For instance, the operating system (OS) will now exit sleep mode faster, and file copying, whether from one spot on the hard drive to another, or between the PC and the network, will also be quicker. Microsoft has provided a number of automatic updates around those concerns since the OS's release, but SP1 wraps all of them up into one package.

The release of SP1 gives channel partners a great reason to revisit the topic of switching to Vista with customers that have not done so already, Katz noted. "They didn't need to wait...but now that (SP1) is there, this is an excellent time to go back to customers and talk about evaluating or deploying Vista."

SOURCE: 19 March, 2008.  By Patricia Pickett.  www.echannelline.com