ITWire

Given the number of Vista updates promising ‘performance enhancements’ recently, and the surprisingly stable Vista installation I’m now running after recently reloading and going through a new round of driver and USB hell (despite having all of the Vista drivers for my system working fantastically on my previous Vista installation), the original Vista SP1 tests from the exo.blog were clearly quite sensationalist while also being very interesting to read at the same time.

So it’s nice to see that Microsoft have seemingly vindicated themselves somewhat by creating a service pack that, at least for now, looks like it will genuinely improve performance for most users.

Only the release of XP SP3 and widespread use will uncover if the speed increases are universally felt or if they start introducing new bugs and problems of their own, but at least for once in recent times Microsoft is finally getting themselves some good Windows publicity for something done well, essentially on time and delivering above and beyond expectations.

Te exo.blog entry ends by suggesting that XP users will likely stick with XP and SP3, delaying any upgrade to Vista and holding out for the next version of Windows, dubbed ‘Windows 7’, due out in 2010, and ask readers to judge whether Windows Vista is the equivalent of Windows ME.

The last year of Vista has really been quite a mix of good and bad experiences for me personally, with Vista seemingly being, over the last year, “Vista beta”, just like all those Web 2.0 ‘beta’ sites out there.

At least, unlike ME, updates have been relatively constant over the past year, actually fixing problems people were having, even if it took months for some of the fixes to come through.

As for the speed of Vista SP1, we’ll see what the test results are when it is finally released, but for XP users, the upcoming SP3 looks like being the must-have update of the year.