Windows Vista SP1 for everyone

By: Matthias Bauer

Microsoft has released the Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. It should increase Vistas performance, and provides some new features for notebook users.

Finally, the Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista has been released and it is ready to get downloaded for everyone. This collection of patches and upgrades provide interesting new features, especially for notebook owners.

The power consumption of Vista notebooks was higher than Windows XP’s energy usage. The Service Pack 1 wants to change this fact, and the battery runtime shall be longer. C’t ran several tests, but they did not measure much longer runtimes. Furthermore, the Service Pack 1 enables faster wakeup of the notebook from standby and passive state. Our own test with the SP 1 also showed no significant higher battery runtimes with an HP office laptop.

Microsoft reduced the number of security questions, i.e., when installing new hardware, because many users deactivated this feature and increased the risks of errors thereby.

Copying, moving, compressing and decompressing of data got improved, and work faster than before. Furthermore, the decryption system BitLocker for local drives was developed. This system enables protection of every drive, even of external ones, but BitLocker only come with Windows Vista Ultimate and Business.

Certainly, patches for error correction and for increasing security are included. Those boost stability and reliability of Windows Vista. Overall the Service Pack 1 contains more than 500 patches and updates.

The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is already available for downloading.