Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta Next Week

[malware]

Windows Vista Team Blog posted today some good information on the next service pack, second in row, for Windows Vista.

We are committed to continually improving Windows, and we've been getting some questions about the timing of the next service pack for Windows Vista. Following the success of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 last spring, we have been working hard on Windows Vista Service Pack 2. As a part of the development and testing process, we're going to start by providing a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers with Windows Vista SP2 Beta for evaluation next Wednesday, October 29. The final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality. So we'll track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for the release.

Windows Vista SP2 Beta will contain previously released fixes focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues.


In addition to previously released updates since the launch of Windows Vista SP1, Windows Vista SP2 will contain changes focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards:

• Windows Vista SP2 adds Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches.
• Windows Vista SP2 contains the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology.
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista.
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration.
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[francis511]

But will it speed up dx10 ?

 

[Mussels]

well those improvements all look good.

you want faster DX10, go bitch at the game devs.

"Ooh look, DX10 is ~30% faster... lets add more graphics that make it 50% slower, customers like that"

 

[Triprift]

Hopefully this one will be a bit quicker being available to automatic update had the first one for just over a month.

 

[95Viper]

If you wanna try here is some info:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2841

 

[OnBoard]

Updated Windows couple days back and saw the first SP2 update there. though it was further away in the future, but guess not. SP2 for XP made it great, hope same thing happens to Vista.

But will it speed up dx10 ?

Heh, that would be great, but it's getting there. Far Cry 2 is the first game that is faster in DX10 with AA than DX9. Not for all GPUs and systems, but it's a start. DX10 is still quite new, DX9 has been there for years. It's like PS2, same hardware but games got more beautiful every year (and run as good). Once more games are done for DX10 with DX9 support and not with DX9 + DX10 stuff added on top to slow things down, it will change. When DX11 is here we can bitch about how slow it is and how good DX10 runs

 

[Triprift]

Its already great imho.

 

[Polarman]

Good! I look foward to it.

I doubt that even SP2 for Vista will sway away diehard XP fanatics.

 

[TheGuruStud]

They better not auto. add that POS search. I'll have to go through and uninstall the damn thing on everyone's comps. It's the most worthless program ever.

 

[PCpraiser100]

i was hoping that SP2 will improve compatibility and performance issues, oh well, I guess it's another few months with XP.

 

[Kreij]

I'll wait for the final release. None of the improvements they mentioned really affect me, but more hardware compatibility is never a bad thing.

 

[panchoman]

well those improvements all look good.

you want faster DX10, go bitch at the game devs.

"Ooh look, DX10 is ~30% faster... lets add more graphics that make it 50% slower, customers like that"

rofl, crysis.

 

[xu^]

im sick of hearing them blabbing on about windows search.. does any1 care ? i know i couldn't care less about windows search tbh ,it wouldn't make my list of top 50 things to fix or change on vista lol

Far more important things to sort out imho than some poxy search

 

[SimFreak47]

Glad to see Microsoft is working on improving their OS. Pretty soon, more people will be running Vista, and Microsoft can kill XP's support, and stop marketing it!

 

[Kreij]

im sick of hearing them blabbing on about windows search.. does any1 care ? i know i couldn't care less about windows search tbh ,it wouldn't make my list of top 50 things to fix or change on vista lol

Far more important things to sort out imho than some poxy search

While many of us may not see the big deal about search, it may be an important issue to their corporate customer base, and something that many people wanted updated.

 

[OnBoard]

Its already great imho.

It's good now, great would be allowing 2 or more display drivers at once for example.

They better not auto. add that POS search. I'll have to go through and uninstall the damn thing on everyone's comps. It's the most worthless program ever.

First thing I did was to block it from windows update and have already disabled it on my OS.

i was hoping that SP2 will improve compatibility and performance issues, oh well, I guess it's another few months with XP.

I have no compability or performance issues. SP1 made Vista on bar with XP performance and every game has worked for me (+the few programs I use). But yeah, rather those thing more than that list mentioned

im sick of hearing them blabbing on about windows search.. does any1 care ? i know i couldn't care less about windows search tbh ,it wouldn't make my list of top 50 things to fix or change on vista lol

Far more important things to sort out imho than some poxy search

Hehe, I have no idea why it's 4.0. The little I have used Vistas search it's so horrid and unuser friendly. XPs search was just fine if you had misplaced something. Maybe it's for those people that use details page under properties for MP3s. Like I'd want to give stars for my songs, use them to search afterwards?!

Well searching *.avi still works for those ..erm home movies

Multi quote post monster.

 

[Hayder_Master]

did i only one expect dx10.1

 

[Mussels]

i like the vista search... the little thing in the top right corner of windows.

Why do you guys hate it so much... its fast and finds the files i want? as opposed to XP's search which takes forever.

 

[TheGuruStud]

i like the vista search... the little thing in the top right corner of windows.

Why do you guys hate it so much... its fast and finds the files i want? as opposed to XP's search which takes forever.

Eats CPU for no reason.

And I don't ever need to search except within a specific folder and that takes all of 2 secs.

 

[Mussels]

Eats CPU for no reason.

... when? i've never seen that. The Indexer eats CPU/HDD for breakfast, but its not very hard to tell it to not index (and it still searches tons faster than XP)

 

[TheGuruStud]

... when? i've never seen that. The Indexer eats CPU/HDD for breakfast, but its not very hard to tell it to not index (and it still searches tons faster than XP)

Then, you're lucky. My buddy accidentally installed it, then was wondering why he couldn't play HD files.
I promptly told him to delete that shit haha.

 

[Wile E]

i like the vista search... the little thing in the top right corner of windows.

Why do you guys hate it so much... its fast and finds the files i want? as opposed to XP's search which takes forever.

I hate all indexers. I disable them on all of my OSes. Even Spotlight on OS X. I keep my files organized, and have 0 need for the os to babysit them for me.

And I accidentally installed Search 4.0 on my AMD rig. It is a cpu hog when it decides it wants to index your drives. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay much attention to cpu usage to stop indexing, it only pays attention to HDD activity. If you aren't hitting the HDD hard, it will try to index, even if you are pegged at 100% cpu doing something.

 

[Mussels]

I hate all indexers. I disable them on all of my OSes. Even Spotlight on OS X. I keep my files organized, and have 0 need for the os to babysit them for me.

And I accidentally installed Search 4.0 on my AMD rig. It is a cpu hog when it decides it wants to index your drives. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay much attention to cpu usage to stop indexing, it only pays attention to HDD activity. If you aren't hitting the HDD hard, it will try to index, even if you are pegged at 100% cpu doing something.

i disable indexing here too, i just like the search itself... even without indexing, it works really fast.

 

[OnBoard]

i like the vista search... the little thing in the top right corner of windows.

Why do you guys hate it so much... its fast and finds the files i want? as opposed to XP's search which takes forever.

I'm not talking about the corner quicksearch one, that's handy if you can't find something on specific drive. My comments are for the start/search/for files and folders/advanced search.

That's the one that I hate. Yes it's faster than XPs, but they could have kept it cleaner and more simple. Sure I can just use the corner one (if it had location selection too). Maybe I should start using the my computer search bar instead, so I don't have to look at it Not a biggie though, I use search only couple times a year anyways.

 

[wahdangun]

it will be cool if they release service pack to enable 2 videocard driver.

because i want to try phyx with my onboard geforce 8200, it will be a decent upgrade to do but vista didn't allow me to do that