Windows Vista Team has release the beta version of Vista Service Pack 1 to a group of private testers on connect.microsoft.com. Brandon LeBlanc of Windows Vista Blog has been playing around with SP1 for several weeks now. He posted that it’s being delivered in two flavors – standalone for administrators who wish to install SP1 on multiple machines, and via Windows Update which ranges between 51MB to 680MB. Since the update includes several hotfixes and compatibility packs that have been already installed, the download will be relatively small, if you’ve got an up to date PC.
Brandon also writes that there aren’t many changes to the interface, except for the search button being removed from the right side of the Start Menu. I am not quite sure, if the Search Box has been removed from the Start Menu. He has posted a screenshot of the Start Menu, but it has been cropped pretty badly. This removal comes after Google complained about it.
He noticed improvements in resuming from Hibernation or Sleep, accessing mapped network, and overall responsiveness of his PCs. Notebooks running SP1 will also notice an increased battery life.
Users had complained that copying files from one location to another took too much time, but that has been fixed in Vista SP1. SP1 also lets users change the default desktop software. You can use alternate applications like Google Desktop Search instead of Vista’s built-in desktop search.
The Service Pack is currently in an early stage of the Beta. Only invited testers will be able to download and test Vista SP1, but I strongly believe that it’ll be soon be available in file sharing networks like BitTorrent.
[Via: Vista Blog and CyberNet]
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