Windows Vista SP1 gets put through the paces

While you might not be able to get your hands on it yet, Microsoft has released Windows Vista SP1 to a few thousand beta testers. And Neil Randall at PC Magazine has been playing with the update and writes up his thoughts in a thorough review.

In a nutshell, SP1 makes Windows vista a bit snappier and more responsive to requests, which we had expected. Randall reports that Vista returns from hibernation mode about 50% faster than it used to, and his system resumes from sleep mode a bit quicker as well. And it takes less time to copy files and folders.

Many of the updates in SP1 are security enhancements. That means for the most part, you'll never really notice them. Remote Desktop files can be signed and you can use BitLocker to encrypt multiple hard drives.

Windows Vista SP1 also supports Direct3D 10.1 and includes a few extra features for x64 users.

Tags: osupdates, sp1, vista, windows-vista, windows-vista-sp1