Vista SP1 was over 435 megabytes for me, making it larger than any Microsoft Service Pack ever, larger than any Mac point release, larger than many OSes themselves. Installation took well over an hour in three stages, which is suspicious, as again, I’ve installed OSes in less time. But it went smoothly and did it all on its own, which was nice.
Click the link for a larger picture
Booting up, there’s nothing immediately different. I tried copying a 28MB file over the network to check on time. It copied the first half in light-speed, but then stopped. I called the guy whose machine I copied from: “Hey, did you just shut down?” His response, “Negative, I lost connection all of a sudden.” Uh-oh, I thought.
But alas, after he rebooted, I copied the latest ISO of gOS, which weighs in at 535MB, and it told me 60 seconds, and by jiminy, it took about 60 seconds.
Thus far – after 30 minutes use – I’ve only noticed one new feature, it appears Vista SP1 has some new “modes” of desktop wallpaper display, and can finally “stretch” wallpaper. Thanks God, because my larger secondary monitor always had stripes with Vista RTM.
Click the link for a larger picture
So, first impression? So far, so good. My biggest pet peeve – the abysmal network transfer speed – appears to have been quelled (potentially, we’ll need more data for a final conclusion). I’ve long since gotten used to the graphics and learned to enjoy the subtle fade-in/fade-out of apps. I still am warning people to stay clear of Vista for some time, and still have no plans to roll it out at work in the enterprise, but I certainly think that Vista is coming along. I think there’s a better shot that when Windows 7/IE8 come of age, people will be willing to rethink things on a larger scale.
I just started using Vista for the first time at my new job 2 weeks ago. Don’t have SP1 yet but so far have actually enjoyed it. Was very suprised by this. No major complaints although I haven’t tried to do any real heavy lifting with it.
First off, Visual Studio 2003 AND 2005 have so many problems it’s not even worth the time to install them. Secondly, Microsoft said the solution was to wait for VS 2008 – That’s NOT as solution, because 2008 was not yet out. Our company (mostly just me) wasted two weeks on Vista before I finally said ‘screw it’ and loaded our LAST license of XP…
All is well now.
Vista was such a disappointment (not that I expected much) but the trade-off in stability and performance is simply unacceptable for an “Upgrade”. I’ve recently installed Sabayon Linux on my friend’s new PC – and it puts Vista, OSX, and everything I’ve ever seen completely to shame. I mean SPANKS them with an ‘ugly stick’! Never have I witnessed such beautiful 3D desktopness – and certainly never expected it to be a Linux distro that would do it. And the kicker, is it’s free. Never shall I purchase a Microsoft OS again (even OEM installs may be wiped out in my future).