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Fuzzy Logic Vista SP1: the amazing story of the software that changed Microsoft forever
Fuzzy Logic Vista SP1: the amazing story of the software that changed Microsoft forever | Vista SP1: the amazing story of the software that changed Microsoft forever |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Saturday, 22 March 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 4 Vista SP1 was truly remarkable. It delivered incredible benefits that users could only have dreamed of after the initial disaster that was Microsoft Windows Vista. Drivers were one of the big bugbears in the original Vista release, even tripping up Microsoft’s own executives who discovered their shiny new Vista machines wouldn’t work with their existing hardware, from printers to graphics drivers. So bad was the original Vista with some graphics hardware that one executive had complained his new Sony laptop couldn’t even run the world’s most underpowered video editing software: Windows Movie Maker. With the lack of even that simple capability, the Microsoft executive in question complained that his US $2100 Sony laptop was little more than an expensive email machine. But SP1 changed that. Somehow, Microsoft re-engineered the ‘Aero’ interface to work with basic hardware, much like Apple’s OS X had delivered cool graphical capabilities for years on graphics hardware far inferior to that in most computers from the past couple of years. $2100 email machines suddenly became $2100 powerhouses of computing! Microsoft had also managed to deliver an incredible 200% speed increase in Vista SP1 over the previous Vista RTM. People could not believe how zippy and snappy the OS suddenly was. File copies were a stunning 125% faster, too. Network administrators and home users alike were stunned. Even battery life had been improved – no more were laptops only able to run for 2 hours before dying or needing a power point. Thanks to intense work on power management, Microsoft promised a minimum of 10 hours battery life – with all features set to maximum power. And if you turned your processor to half speed, or your screen to half brightness, you could easily extend battery life to a whopping 24 hours. It was incredible – laptop users were finally liberated! Of course questions were asked over how Microsoft could have got it so wrong with the first Vista release. But all was forgiven now that SP1 had arrived, on time and with features that were once but dreams. Because Vista was actually rock-solid reliable and supremely secure – and even self-repairing, all those security programs that all Windows users load as standard and most Mac users ignore suddenly became unnecessary on Windows PCs. It sent the share prices of Internet security companies into a tizzy, while Microsoft’s share price went sky high. Hackers around the world have since been trying to crack Vista SP1, but none, as yet, have succeeded. Under SP1, Vista became an operating system that ‘just worked’. Microsoft even started giving users choice. Those who wanted the word ‘start’ back in the ‘start button’ could have it, those that wanted the control panel and many other things changed in Vista to look like they were in XP could have it at the click of a button. So, why did Microsoft decide to change the name of ‘User Account Control’ (UAC) to UMAC? Why did Linus Torvalds publicly dump Linux, and what was Miguel de Icaza’s secret plan all along? Why did Apple suddenly start offering Mac OS X as an OS for any Intel computer, not just their own – and why did no-one bother? Please read onto page 4 for the stunning conclusion. |
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