Windows Vista SP2 Beta vs Vista SP1:Battle of the Service Packs

Introduction

Microsoft’s latest Operating System (OS) for PCs, Windows Vista, has not been received warmly by PC owners. Announced on July 22 2005, it was released on January 30, 2007 worldwide. This was 5 years after Microsoft’s previous OS, Windows XP, was released. Vista was seen as a bloated, resource-hungry OS with numerous hardware incompatibilities and borked drivers which was slower than XP. Since then, there has been a wave upon wave of updates and fixes by Microsoft trying to make Vista popular and better than any OS it has released before.

Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Vista on February 4, 2008. This contained Hardware Ecosystem Support and Enhancements, Application Compatibility Improvements, Reliability Improvements, Performance and Power Consumption Improvements, Security Improvements and Support for New Technologies and Standards. This was a big step for Vista, as now Vista looked like the OS that Microsoft intended it to be.

Microsoft plans on releasing Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Vista. The first beta of this new Service Pack was made available to everyone through a Customer Preview Program (CPP) from December 4, 2008. You can download this beta from here depending on your version of Windows. Note that Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will share a single service pack binary.

I  have been using Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition for the last 8 months after upgrading from XP. I am fully satisfied with this OS. I like the look and feel so much, that I can never think of going back to Windows XP as my main operating system for everyday use. Naturally when Microsoft made this beta available, curiosity took the better of me and I decided to investigate to see if the performance could be even better.

Some of the notable changes in Vista SP2 include:

• The Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1. Bluetooth v2.1 is the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration.
• Improved performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode.
• New capabilities to Direct X Graphic display reliability. The graphics experience has been greatly improved for users, such as gamers, running applications that require a lot of graphics processing.
• Updates to the RSS feeds sidebar with improved performance and responsiveness.
• Improved audio and video performance for streaming high definition content.
• Ability to record data to Blu-Ray media.
• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches (currently available for SP1 systems as a standalone update)

Complete information about SP2 can be here