First look at Windows Vista SP1 (build 6001.16659)

Earlier today I downloaded the standalone installer for Windows Vista SP1 build 6001.16659 and installed it on a few systems to see what it was like - and I thought you might like to take a look at it.

Don't expect huge UI changes after installing SP1 - the changes are small and subtle. In fact, if you're not familiar with Windows Vista, you might miss the SP1 changes. I've put together an image gallery showing some of the most significant changes.

Here are some of the changes:

• Disk Defragmenter now allows you to pick volumes to defragment
  
• Search option removed from the Start menu
  

Other points worth noting:

• The install process took about 40 minutes on my system
  
• The system rebooted 4 times
  
• So far, I've not come across any SP1 related issues
  

What I'm really interested in seeing is how performance and reliability is affected.

Stay tuned!

Source:http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=810

Can you customise it to look like Windows 98?

- because that's how my XP looks!

What idiot removed search from the start menu? That was one of my favourite Vista features.

^ it's still there, there were two search options, one was where you could type in text, and it would search instantly, that one is still on the screenshots, the other is the search link on the left side of the startmenu, which will open the search box, and then you can begin your search (let's call it the XP search option). But I'm sure you can get it back by changing the properties of the start menu.

Thanks for posting that, Reimar.

I'm on SP1 at the moment. Once it's finished installing, after a couple more reboots... it is *significantly* better than Vista. My machine (a Thinkpad X60 with 2GB RAM) is *gasp* almost reliable now... practically no disk thrashing, applications work more smoothly, and no long lockups (not responding) - that is to say not nearly as long as they used to be.

I can't wait for the official release.

However, some caveats:

* IE7 crashes regularly, I presume this is an SP1 build - and TV is the site that crashes the most. I think it has to do with either Flash or JavaScript... but in the meantime I am now on FireFox and much happier (and besides, it's faster).

* Skype will probably NOT work correctly on your machine. 3.5 would crash seconds after loading... 3.2 crashes a few hours after loading - I assume this is related to Skype trying to check for updates, and or Skype Extras.

* Every now and then DiskKeeper crashes as well - but fortunately we're talking once a week, and that doesn't bother me at all, it's a small trade-off for a huge performance boost.