Windows Vista SP1 - Review

After installing Vista SP1 onto a few machines I did not see a noticeable difference. In fact, noticing the improvements or changes may take a bit of time. One thing I did notice fairly quickly was that SP1 does away with the Search item on Vista's start menu. With the original Vista, Microsoft set Windows Search Explorer as the default, but you can now change this to use the desktop search program of your choice, such as Google Desktop.

After a bit of time it became clear that SP1 fixed some glitches like when you want to connect to the internet with a PPoE connection. Prior to the service pack it would take some time to make the connection when Vista was starting up. The operating system also loaded a few seconds quicker on the systems we installed it on, that is definitely a plus! Explorer also seems to have gained some speed.

The only issue that we really have with SP1 is the install time. An average of 45 minutes on each machine. Overall SP1 will improve the performance making the transition from XP an easier one for the leary Vista crowd.