Windows Vista

Download and installation instructions.

Announcing Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC)
Today we’re making available the release candidate (RC) of Windows Vista SP1 via Microsoft Connect, and tomorrow subscribers to TechNet and MDSN will have access to those RC bits too. In addition, the RC will be available to the public next week via Microsoft’s Download Center. The release candidate phase of beta software is typically the final phase before the RTM (release-to-manufacturing) of a product and indicates that the code has attained a significant level of performance and stability.

In some scenarios, games and benchmarks perform more poorly than expected on a Windows Vista-based computer. This issue occurs when the games and the benchmarks use multiple display adapters in a Linked Display Adapter (LDA) configuration.

This is an updated version of a previously issued hotfix. Download & Info
Source = [H]ardOCP

Windows Vista’s biggest fans Ed Bott & Paul Thurrott are defending Vista, again:
EB’s Article.
PT’s blog on EB’s article.
I like and respect these 2 guys. They don’t know me from Adam and I’m sure these 2 don’t care about the opinion of a peon like me but…
Sorry guys but the reason people think Vista is slower than XP is because it is. I’ve run them side-by-side on 4 different machines in my home and in every instance you can see and feel the difference. The more powerful the machine the less performance difference I have seen. I should note that some of the hotfixes for Vista have made a big difference. Some still argue that much of this may be driver issues and FWIW I agree to a point. But, It really doesn’t make any difference does it? All you and I care about is how it runs on our machine.
I would like to know what you think, and please vote in the new poll.
Eric

A reader that goes by the handle “Sacred” submitted this story about Vista SP1, RC1 being released to testers. Apparently, according to at least one benchmark it isn’t helping Vista vs. XP performance wise:

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP’s 35 seconds.

Article
Yes, I know it’s only one test. We’ll probably see more benchmarks echoing this and a few showing the opposite…