PTravel

I've been running SP1 for a few weeks now. Short version: I'm delighted. Everything on my Vaio SZ-440 laptop works perfectly. I no longer have to deal with kludges and work-arounds, I no longer experience the odd, unexplainable crash, and everything is FAST. I'll note, too, that I have a lot of programs loaded on my machine, many rather obscure, many that are legacy XP-only software. I haven't had to resort to a system restore (my standard fix of last resort) since I've installed SP1. I'm really pleased with how my machine works, now.

My primary home desktop is an XP machine, a 3 GHz P4 with 1 gig of RAM. My laptop is a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 gig of RAM, so this is somewhat of an "apples and oranges" comparison. However, my laptop boots up much faster, loads programs much faster, runs the programs faster and, generally, provides a much smoother experience. When I work on the desktop, I also find that I miss some of the bells and whistles and cosmetic window dressing of Vista, e.g. the sidebar, better plug-and-play, etc.

I can't say whether my experience is typical, but I am, apparently, finally experiencing the benefits that were promised with Vista, without any of the many, many bugs and other problems.

I will note the following, however:

1. I'm very careful about maintenance, e.g. if I uninstall a program, I make sure that all traces of it are gone from the registry, the System32 directory, etc.

2. I'm religious about keeping all drivers up-to-date.

3. I defrag regularly.

4. I manually check Sony's Vaio update page and also will manually check updates for all my software from time-to-time, even if it has an auto-update feature.

If, however, my experience with SP1 is typical, I would no longer suggest that people avoid machines that come with Vista installed. You might even want to try an upgrade if any of the Vista features sound appealing.

OutOfOffice

I have to concur with the opening post.

Prior to SP1, I was utterly frustrated with Vista and had multiple driver issues, my computer would mysteriously shut down randomly after an hour of idle, audio issues and Realplayer simply would not work as well as a few other niggles that escape me right now.

Fast forward to a month after I installed SP1, and all of the above remains resolved and I might even toy around with turning the Aero interface back on, (I currently mimic the look & feel of XP).

I still feel underwhelmed with Vista, but don't actively dislike it any longer.

GUWonder

Thanks for the review. SP1 has improved my Vista experience in that the boot time is less. Is it also more compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader's latest version?

There used to be some kind of compatibility warning before that would come up before the SP1 update, but since I downloaded the latest version of Reader and SP1 at near the same time, I am not sure if it was SP1 that resolved the matter or if it was just that the latest version of Adobe Reader is now more compatible with Vista than before.

PTravel

I never had any compatibility issues with Acrobat Reader. I use Acrobat Professional 7.0 with Vista, and have had problems with the PDF printer driver that comes with it. However, I switched to the free Primo PDF printer driver, and that works great. I haven't tried Pro 7.0's driver since installing SP1.

schoflyer

I spent last Saturday by the pool at the SGS in Bangkok cleaning, defragging, etc. Downloaded and manually installed 64bit SP-1 on my BKK-NRT flight. Upped my Thinkpad x61s to 4GB RAM today.

My user experience has SIGNIFICANTLY improved. My ultra-portable is now a responsive tool. This is a good thing.

DeafFlyer

In my case, I haven't noticed much of a difference. I like it before SP1 and I still like it now.

sbm12

I would suggest that the RAM upgrade is more responsible for improved performance than SP1. I'm sure SP1 helps, too, but RAM makes a huge difference, especially if you are using Aero, sidebar gadgets, etc.

bdjohns1

I'll throw in a "me too" here. I was having a bunch of unexplained bluescreens with Vista RTM. SP1 has been much more reliable.

choefman

Installed SP1 on three of my computers now, didn't notice a big difference but than I didn't really have any issues before SP1 either.

mikem132

when you copy a file from A to B is it faster? Mine, post SP1, shows it is moving much faster in the progress window but actual time is pretty similar to before. In either case, it is VASTLY slower than it was with XP. That is my biggest Vista issue...file transfer. I still get numerous WIndows Explorer lockups, but these might have something to do with running IE 8 beta....don't know. I also still get Acrobat errors, even with Adobe's latest download. Acrobat works, but always displays an error. Naturally, there are always Nvidia driver issues---that's Nvidia, not Microsoft.

Leumas

I didn't have much trouble prior to SP1, and not much difference post-SP1. However, I do notice copying and moving files are quite a bit faster.

ScottC

File transfers have indeed become much faster (they couldn't get much slower pre-SP1). I had some driver packages installed before SP1 that fixed things, but MS never officially released those

3544quebec

I have Vista Ultimate 64-bit version(and that is about as technical as I get).
I have some software installed that I think was designed for XP and when I try to run it I get -"Error in opening the program. Possible causes - incompatibility with your operating system" Should there be a (simple ) way around this?

PTravel

Yes.

You need to find where the actual executable for the program is located. Usually, it's in c:\Program Files\[program name].

Look for a file with an .exe extension. If there are more than one, look for one that shows the program's icon and/or has the program name.

Right click on the file and select Properties. Select the Compatibility tab. Check the box that says, "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" Make sure Windows XP (Service Pack 2) is in the selection box. Click "Okay."

Face east, stand on one leg and say, "Oh great and powerful Gates, please bless this Vista computer and make my program RUN!" This is the most important step.

If the gods smile on you, the program will run without the error.

Steph3n

Vista SP1 is great except the Remote Desktop client, the new version of it blows chunks everywhere; worse than motion sickness in high turbulance.