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There may be no point in waiting for Vista's Service Pack 1

During interviews with Microsoft honchos during this year's CES, I was told not to expect Windows Vista's first service pack to be as big a deal as it was for Windows XP.
That's because of the way Microsoft is using Windows Update these days. Why dump a boatload of new code into Windows all at once with a service pack, when Microsoft can slowly morph it over time?
Now a top Microsoft executive has reiterated this:

"Will we continue to have service packs? Yes we will," said Michael Sievert, corporate VP for Windows marketing at Microsoft. "But they have a different level of importance today as people get their updates in real-time using Windows Update," said Sievert, according to a transcript of a conference call he held Monday with financial analysts.
As a result, Sievert said Microsoft won't release a "big bang" service pack for Windows Vista similar in size and scope to Windows XP Service Pack 1, which was issued in 2002 with mixed results. That 30-Mbyte download was designed to patch major security holes, improve Windows XP's overall performance, and help Microsoft comply with U.S. Department of Justice mandates.

Hey, 30 MB was nothing compared to the size of SP2, which could be as big as 266 MB, depending on your setup.
This should give pause to those who say, "I'm waiting for Vista SP1 before I upgrade or get a new PC with Vista on it."
A bigger issue, though, is driver support. Too many vendors continue to lag behind in releasing Vista drivers. I hear several times a week from readers who are frustrated because they've bought a new PC with Vista pre-installed, and some peripheral they want to keep -- usually a printer or scanner -- doesn't work with it.
On the other hand, I'm also surprised at the number of drivers that are actually built in to Vista, or that XP drivers will sometimes work.
Friday, as part of a review for my Tuesday Computing column, I installed Vista on a Gateway FX530XT Gaming PC. I'm using an older Linksys WUSB54GS USB-based Wi-Fi adapter on it. Linksys doesn't have Vista drivers for this version of the adapter (it's 1.0; drivers are only available for 2.0), so I worried that I would have to get a new adapter.
But when I installed it, I was surprised to find that either a.) the Windows XP drivers continued to work; or b.) Vista came with the drivers. The adapter connected perfectly to my home network. I've mentioned before that Vista has built-in drivers for my Canon all-in-one printer, which was a pleasant discovery.
(The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, which scans your PC and reports on potential issues, indicated ambiguity with the Linksys device. It basically said it didn't know what would happen to the adapter in Vista.)
If I were holding off on a Vista upgrade, it would be because of driver issues, not to wait for a service pack.



Source:TechBlog: There may be no point in waiting for Vista's Service Pack 1