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Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 is out! |
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Written by Electro
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Jul 04, 2008 at 09:42 PM |
Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 is now out, if you have Vista, you should download it and aply it as soon as possible.
According to Steve Ballmer of Microsoft;"Windows Vista is a work in progress", SP1 has a couple of things: including an improved user experience and securtiy enhancements. But there have been some other changes too, most of which were needed to improve the operating system.
Support for new hardware and standards
* Support for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), which means that Vista runs on GPT format disks, boots and hibernates on those disks.
*Support for x64 EFU network boot
*Support for Direct3D 10.1
*Support for exFAT, which is a new file system used by flash disks
*Support for SD Advanced DMA, which improves the transfer mechanism (speed) in new SD controllers.
*Support for creating single DVD media that boots with eirer EFI or BIOS
*Support for new Media Center devices
*Enhanced MPEG-2 decoder
*New features in the Netwrok Projector application.
SP1 also has some fixes that improves performance
*Wioreless ad-hoc networkin is better.
*Peer-topeer stuff like Meetingspace has better performance and "success rate/"
*EFS files are included in the built-in backup solution.
*When ejecting NTFS formatted disks, you should no longer lose any data
*Most of the crashes/hangs in Vista, Calendar, Media player, drivers - the most common reasons for failure in all reports to Microsoft - have been resolved
*Sleep/hibernate problems have been fixed.
*Browsing netwrk has been installed
*Power Consumption has been improved; the CPU can stay in sleep mode more than before.
*PRoblems with some video chipsets have been corrected.
*File copy, unzupping, unpacking, moving has been so much better - 25% faster when doing copying locally and about 50% faster when copying files between another Vista SP1 system.
*BITS as been updated and is faster
*Using Explorer when copying files has been improved
*Reading large files is faster
*Jscript in Explorer is much faster.
*Some problems with ready drives have finally been fixed.
*A new version of the RDP client has a new compression algorithm, making it faster.
*The delay when unlocking a computer is gone.
*Login when outside the company, which could take a long time, is faster.
*Resuming the machine is faster.
*USB has been improved, faster.
*SuperFectch and ReadyBoost have been improved both in general and for certain devices.
*Printing has been improved and is faster.
Various Security fixes have been set;
*Standard users can now perform a complete backup. The option is perfect for the end user who must travel around - he does not need to be an Admin just to do a backup.
*BitLocker can now support multiple authentication mechanisms at the same time. That means you can combine TPM with a startupkey (on USB) and a PIN if you like.
*Security is improved for Smartcards, which now supports Biometrics instead of PIN if you would like that. They also changed the handling of PINs so that there are a number of ways to attack Smartcard based system.
*Data Execution Protection (DEP) has been improved to let developers own their own process.
*If you run RemoteApps from a Windows Server 2008 terminal server, it now supports signed RDP files.
*SP1 now supports SSTP - Secure Socket Transport Protocol - Which is the VPN protocol, known to the rest of the world as SSL-VPN.
*Kernel patch management has been improved for x64 and for 3rd party and ISV's to be able to patch whithout lowering the secutrity in an x64 system.
*New crptographic algorithms in IPSec have been added.
*New support for eID is included.
*You find support for a new FIPS in the Wireless client.
Administration changes;
*Users / Administrators can control on which drives the disk defragmenter runs.
*Users / Administrators can now use the Network Diagnostics to solve even file share problems; before SP1, only network problems could be solved.
*A new security policy is available, called "UAC" for UAccess. When you enable UAX, they can prompt to ve elevated without using the secure desktop. The big win here is that when you connect to a user with Remote Assistance, you can see the prompt to elevate you. Before this policy, it immediately jumped out to "secure Desktop" leaving you lost.
*Printing to the local printer in a remote desktop session is both faster and more stable.
*KMS (Key Managed Service) is now allowed to run inside of a Virtual Machine, whereas before it could only be installed on a physical machine.
Setup and Deployment;
*the 32/64 bit WinPE problem is gone.
*SP1 is packaged into downloads, on e with ALL languages and one with the big five. It is easy to deploy.
*"Hotpatching," which means the downtime on a box is lowered because it now replaces files that are in use by running processes.
*You can install 64 bit OS from a 32bit WinPE.
*Patch deployment is improved and install more quickly.
Other Stuff
*When you check memory, the amount of memory in a machine, it now shows the physical amount of memory in the box.
*Scanning photos will not open photo library; instead it opens Explorer.
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