Interview on Windows Vista SP1 with Nick White, Microsoft Product Manager What?s the biggest feature users and admins will get out of the new service pack?
SP1?s purpose is not primarily as a feature-delivery vehicle but as a way to improve the user experience and enhance it in some areas. In terms of the importance of what?s included in SP1, it really depends on what matters to the particular user. If you?re a mainstream consumer user with a laptop, you?re likely to be most interested in the performance improvements included in SP1. Some of these include: optimization to improve power consumption when the display is not changing by managing the processor so it consumes less energy; single sign-on (SSO) for authenticated wired networks; and improvements in the method used to determine which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available).
On the other hand, security may be a greater concern, and numerous I.T. professionals and system administrators have provided ideas for enhancing the security advances fundamental to Windows Vista. Among these was the ability to extend BitLocker encryption beyond the bootable volume to other partitions on your hard disk, as made possible by SP1.
You can check out the white paper published today for details on system enhancements, improvements, and support for new standards enabled by SP1.
Do you think the practice of waiting for the first service pack when it comes to a Windows Deployment is outdated?
I would say that there?s no longer a need to wait for release of a service pack when deploying Windows. This is mainly owed to the advent of Windows Update, via which we can broadly distribute critical and important system updates and driver updates without the need for customers to wait for a roll-up in a service pack. Additionally, we provide tools specifically designed to ease the Windows Vista deployment process in environments where risk and complexity are both increased, such as enterprises. So no, release of a service pack is no longer the milestone event that it used to be?users looking to deploy Windows Vista are best served by not making their deployment schedules contingent upon SP1 availability.
You mentioned in your blog entry that some updates are being pushed ahead of the service pack. What process do you use to determine which updates should wait versus being pushed out to the user base?
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