Ok, so I am one of the lucky ones with a licensed Vista Ultimate and access to the “restricted” 15.000 users beta test of the first Vista Sevice Pack. I installed it 2 days ago on my laptop, using the full standalone build ver. 658, not the update one. Here are my facts & remarks:

Configuration: Centrino Duo 1.7 Ghz , 2 GB RAM, Vista Ultimate 32bit, usual 5400rpm laptop HDD. One note about the OS - it’s upgraded from XP SP2, not a clean Vista installation, so the drivers are a bit messed up. I also use a Windows Mobile device with my laptop.

Software used: 7-10 hours/day - Office 2007, Firefox 2.0, Windows LiveWriter, BullGuard 8.0, TotalCommander, Gaim, Skype, FTP client, UltraVNC, Nero Suite, Multimedia Apps, Windows Mobile Device Center, printer software etc.

Remarks:

First of all, I am pretty sure that the system moves faster. It is not a terrific improvement, but it’s there. The boot sequence now ends about 25-30% faster, from the power on command to the usable desktop (going through the painful HDD activity everytime). I used to start the system, double click the usual set of programs I needed and the go for a smoke until everything opened up. Some of the applications work better, for example Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office application load almost instantly. The annoying “fetching &indexing” time at every computer restart consumes a bit less, allowing other software to run in decent conditions. No major interface modifications noted, the SP1 announcements didn’t state any of those anyway. Another part that improved a lot is file-transfer. Before the SP1, that “calculating time” window really drove me mad, because it used to calculate ALL the files in the beginning. Now it seems to calculate the time for each file at each transfer start, which improves the overall responsiveness.

Also, some of the SP1 “highlights” target the mobile systems. For example, the Aero interface doesn’t draw itself so many times/day (initially I thought it was caused by my video driver, but I found out it’s a Vista “feature”), the sleep/hibernate procedures take A LOT less than before , the random computer halts that I usually encountered when getting out of hibernation are gone (at least in the last 2 days). Some say that SP1 should improve battery life on some laptops because of the improved screen refresh system. I don’t think I’m part of that lucky batch.

Some other additions noted in this SP: DirectX 10.1 and Bitlocker improvement. Unfortunately I don’t play much on the laptop and I don’t use BitLocker at all, so no personal opinions on these ones. Only noticed the changes.

And on the downside, some minor but very annoying problems appeared:

- although one of the pack’s highlights was improved software& driver support, it is actually worse in my case - the sound drivers and software now cause a compatibility warning at every computer start (of course I disabled it), the modem drivers are having the same problem.

- another bug that really gets on my nerves is related to the Windows Mobile Device Center. My mobile device uses a “cooked” WM 2006 and works fine with the XP ActiveSync program. On Vista SP1, I get a COM service error from time to time (I am sure it’s from the WMDC), my syncronising process takes ages and usually gives at least one error, my contacts always end up in a total mess in both Outlook and the mobile device and so on so forth. I am really afraid of syncronising the device with the laptop and I will probably avoid this until I hear about a major improvement on this side.