I’ve been working with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for several months now, in beta releases and, for the last two weeks, in the final released code. I’ve put together this post to answer some questions I’m frequently asked about this long-awaited update. If you have a question that isn’t in this list, ask in the Talkback section.

How big is SP1?

That depends on how you get it. The standalone updater for the five-language version weighs in at 434MB (455,562,200 bytes) for the x86 version, and 726MB (761,740,600 bytes) for the x64 version. If you download the installer via Windows Update, however, the package is much smaller, typically over 50 MB but well under 100 MB. The updater uses Remote Differential Compression to compare the currently installed OS files with the SP1 files on the server, downloads the changed portions from the Windows Update server, and then combines the updates with the unchanged contents on the computer being upgraded.

The 32–bit standalone installer is approximately 60% larger than Windows XP Service Pack 2. Delivered via Windows Update, Vista SP1 is slightly smaller than the Windows Update version of XP SP2.

Will SP1 install on my copy of Windows Vista?

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, FedEx delivered DVDs containing the final, RTM bits of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. My colleagues George Ou and Adrian Kingsley-Hughes received similar packages at roughly the same time.

George was first out of the gate, reporting on his “near death” experiences with a desktop and a notebook PC. I was baffled when I read the original piece, which was completely at odds with every experience I’ve had with SP1 throughout its beta cycle and with the delivered RTM bits. The issue came into clearer focus later in the day, when George updated that original post to note that the problems he encountered had little or nothing to do with SP1. The notebook suffered a catastrophic hardware failure. And the desktop PC? As George notes much later in the story, “My desktop computer seems to be a lot healthier now after I installed Vista SP1.” George has since extensively updated the post, rewriting nearly every paragraph and acknowledging that several of his original speculations were incorrect. backtracking from almost every conclusion he drew originally. [See note at end of post.]

A few hours later, Adrian reported that his first SP1 installation “went without a hitch” and then followed up with a report that says “the promised performance gains are there.”

Meanwhile, over the past 24 hours I’ve been busy installing the RTM bits of SP1 on three different machines here, alongside three other machines that had already been upgraded via Windows Update with a release candidate that turned out to be the final build after all.

And guess what? It all just worked.

• On my main desktop system, a one-week-old Dell XPS 420 running Windows Vista Ultimate, the complete SP1 setup, start to finish, took just under 49 minutes from start (insert DVD, click OK on installer dialog box) to finish (at the Windows desktop, ready to work). It restarted three times during the installation.
• On my wife’s 18–month-old Acer notebook, also running Windows Vista Ultimate, I encountered a minor stumbling block yesterday morning when I first tried to install SP1. It stopped almost immediately, warning me that an installed language pack was incompatible the the version of SP1 I was trying to install. After some digging in Control Panel’s Regional and Language Options dialog box, I found the culprit. Last June I had installed the Italian and Spanish language packs on this machine, and the initial release of SP1 is only compatible with five languages: English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish. (The all-language version will be ready in April.) After I removed the Italian language pack, SP1 install proceeded smoothly. I have no idea how long the actual installation took. When I came back 90 minutes later, the installation had completed and my wife was checking her e-mail and browsing the web. After a day of use, she reports no issues.
• My main Media Center PC, a year-old Dell XPS 410 that was upgraded with CableCARD support last October, just completed the upgrade. It took a grand total of 57 minutes, with no manual intervention required, and all of its Media Center functions, including communicating to a pair of Linksys extenders in other rooms, are working well.

The other three machines on which Vista SP1 is running are working properly, with no issues. For the last few months, I’ve been monitoring the private and public newsgroups carefully. Based on that feedback (thousands of hands-on reports), I know that my experience is typical. There is a known issue with some third-party drivers that don’t follow proper installation practices and can screw up an SP1 installation. That issue should affect a small percentage of Vista users, but it’s serious enough that Microsoft decided to delay the official release of SP1 by about six weeks. Aside from that issue, which will be fixed when the hardware companies release new drivers, I have seen very few SP1–related flaws.

Sadly, anyone who came to ZDNet yesterday read George’s inflammatory (and ultimately incorrect) post blaming SP1 for what actually turned out to be a hardware failure. How many people passed along those links? Quite a few, I suspect. How many people believed the incorrect information and concluded that SP1 is a buggy piece of crap? Too many. How many people came back and read George’s extensive corrections? How many people noted that the inflammatory original headline (“Death encounters with Vista SP1 RTM”) had been revised to the more prosaic and accurate “First experiences with Vista SP1 RTM”? Only a handful, I’m afraid.

I’ll be doing my benchmarking tests over the weekend and will post the results as soon as they’re ready. I’d rather be right than first.

[Update: In an e-mail to me, George points out that he tried not to draw conclusions and did indeed point out that the problems might not have been related to SP1. After rereading his post, I agree with him. The trouble is, the original, inflammatory headline and the first two paragraphs leave the unmistakable impression that SP1 caused a “near death” and a “real death” experience for two computers. Hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of ZDNet newsletter subscribers will see only that headline and the blurb that goes with it, and they will, quite naturally, jump to conclusions. No matter how factual the complete post may have been, the short story it and the headline told was wrong.]

All the kerfuffle over Windows 7 - leaked memos, shaky handheld video clips of leaked builds, equally shaky tentative release schedules - is amusing. I don’t have any inside information to offer, only a perspective drawn from 17 years of watching the Windows development process in action.

The most common comment I’ve read lately is that Microsoft has accelerated the development schedule of Windows 7 in a desperate attempt to replace Windows Vista. Dave Methvin at Information Week argues that Windows 7 may mean Vista’s “early demise.” APC Mag speculates on the meaning of this “early release,” complete with a screenshot it calls “probably fake.” Randall Kennedy at InfoWorld piles onto the meme with this prediction:

Will Microsoft ship Windows 7 early in an effort to salvage its enterprise reputation? I’m guessing yes, if for no other reason than they can. It won’t take a major engineering effort to turn the ashes of Vista (which, despite its reputation, did incorporate some good ideas) into a solid OS that corporate IT actually wants.

All of those predictions miss one big point: There’s nothing “early” about the rumored H2 2009 release date of Windows 7. Last June, I argued that Windows Vista was the functional equivalent of Windows 95, with plenty of wrenching architectural changes that spelled pain for early adopters. Most of those problems were fixed with Windows 98. Likewise, despite the current love fest for XP, most people forget that its first years were plagued with bugs, driver hassles, and security problems (remember Blaster?) that weren’t stamped out until XP Service Pack 2.

Windows 7 is following perfectly in the footsteps of those two releases. I went and charted the history of Microsoft’s Windows releases from 1990 (Windows 3.0) forward, inserting Windows 7 into the mix with a September 30, 2009 release date, which is exactly midway into the second half of 2009. Each bar on the chart represents the number of days after the final release of the previous edition. Read the rest of this entry »

As Mary Jo Foley noted earlier this week, Microsoft has belatedly gotten around to relaxing its licensing rules so that customers can install any edition of Windows Vista in a virtual machine, including the less expensive Home Basic and Home Premium flavors.

I haven’t seen anyone document exactly how this change works yet, so I thought it would be worthwhile to share the full text of relevant sections of the old and new license agreements.

Today, when you install Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate editions, the only mention of virtualization is in an Additional License Terms supplement at the end of the agreement. For Home Basic and Home Premium, this additional condition reads:

4. USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system.

That’s pretty clear.

Now, here’s the entire text of the SP1 supplement:

MICROSOFT SOFTWARE SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS

WINDOWS VISTA HOME BASIC, HOME PREMIUM, BUSINESS, ULTIMATE, AND THEIR SERVICE PACK 1 VERSIONS

If you are licensed to use Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate, or Service Pack 1 of any of these Windows Vista editions (the “software”), you have the following license right. If there is a conflict with any past or future license terms for the software, this supplemental license term applies.

Use with Virtualization Technologies. Instead of using the software directly on the licensed device, you may install and use the software within only one virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device. When used in a virtualized environment, content protected by digital rights management technology, BitLocker or any full volume disk drive encryption technology may not be as secure as protected content not in a virtualized environment. You should comply with all domestic and international laws that apply to such protected content.

A couple things are worth noting here.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure you’ve already read about Gizmodo’s CES crew, who channeled the ghost of Allen Funt, armed themselves with universal IR remote controls, and then worked themselves into a giggle-fest by covertly shutting down some devices on the show floor, thereby sabotaging some demos and displays. I certainly don’t want to reward bad behavior by linking to them and giving them more pageviews, so I recommend you read these reactions from George Ou or Rafe Needleman or PC World’s Tom Spring instead.

It’s easy to mock the over-the-top-ness of CES or the stuffed shirts that define some companies. But apparently it’s equally easy to forget that real people with real jobs lose sleep for months to get ready for this show. Being able to demo their products and technology directly to people who can put it in the retail channel is why they spend small fortunes coming to Las Vegas and put up with the misery of smoke-filled casinos and endless cab lines and ripoff prices. Screwing up a high-profile CES assignment can derail a career.

My ZDNet colleague Larry Dignan says he “honestly doesn’t know” if he would have done the same thing in the same situation. I hope that professionalism would have prevailed. About the last thing I need is someone refusing to return my calls or respond to interview requests because I work for the same outfit as someone who pulled a cheap stunt like this and still has his job.

John Biggs calls it “douchery” and an “asshole move,” which pretty much covers the short version for me. David Pogue of the New York Times has a slightly longer, slightly more civil take:

So the stunt wasn’t clever or funny; it was obnoxious and mean, and I’m embarrassed for the Gizmodo folks.

Hey, next year, maybe they can run around pouring Coke into the vents of the computers! Maybe they can scribble Magic Marker on the cellphones! Maybe they can throw ketchup on the presenters’ shirts! Ha-ha!

I have no doubt that some low-rent Gizmodo clone will try to imitate this stunt next year. But I’m hoping instead for a little creative payback. The folks at Gizmodo have painted a gigantic target on their backs with this stunt. The possibilities are endless:

• Maybe someone who knows some of the Gizmodo editors involved could try giving them exclusive photos of some irresistible object on a USB flash drive with a copy of Switchblade installed. Oh, the hilarity that could ensue from such a prank! If you could get your hands on the posting passwords for even a few minutes, you could disemvowel every Gizmodo post from CES. That would be funny, right?
• Maybe the next time the Gizmodo Gang is covering a big event someone could follow them around with a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth jammer like the one they chortled over back on July 28, 2005 (again, no link because I don’t reward bad behavior), so that their uploads always mysteriously fail. My sides split just thinking of it!
• Maybe CES management will give the Gizmodo crew their press passes next year and then hire some Jack Bauer clones to swoop down on opening day and confiscate their gadgetry, giving it back only after a couple hours of interrogation in the back room. All taped, of course, with highlights on YouTube within hours. It could be better than Borat!

Karma’s a cruel mistress, boys. You might want to sleep with your notebooks and cell phones under your pillows for a while.

It’s no secret that part of Microsoft’s marketing plan for Windows Vista was to push sales of its Home Premium edition, and every bit of market data I’ve seen says they’ve been extremely successful in this effort. As of mid-2007, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, more than 70% of Windows Vista sales through OEMs and at retail were premium editions, “driven by the demand for Windows Vista Home Premium.”

That’s good news for Microsoft, which puts extra dollars in its corporate coffers with every premium edition it sells. But it’s also good news for consumers, who might not even realize that Vista Home Premium gives them a direct pipeline to stream digital music, photos, and videos into other rooms with a Media Center Extender. The small extender devices are designed to plug into an HDTV (and, optionally, a surround sound system) with only minimal setup required. All of the devices I’ve looked at have Wireless N and wired Fast Ethernet support, making them more than capable of handling even demanding HD streams.

At CES, a handful of Microsoft partners have launched so-called v2 extenders, which work with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions. I’ve looked at all of the current and soon-to-be-released offerings. Here’s a quick overview:

• Linksys has two models on display. The DMA2100 is the simplest device of all (and also the least expensive). I have two of these running at home, one connected to a surround sound system and 1080i display in the living room, the other connected to a 1080p display in the bedroom. Both are playing back full HD content from a Dell XPS 410 PC in my office with two CableCARD tuners. The combo has been working flawlessly for two weeks now. The DMA2200 is a similar unit that adds a DVD (not HD) drive.
• D-Link is showing off its DSM-750 MediaLounge device. Paired with a Vista PC, it runs the full Media Center experience at a maximum resolution of 1080i. It also works in conjunction with XP machines to stream digital media via its own MediaLounge interface.
• HP has the best-looking hardware of the bunch in its MediaSmart Receiver (PDF release), which won’t be available until this spring. The shiny black box includes a bay that can hold a Pocket Media drive in 160GB or 250GB sizes. HP’s device works as a straight extender but can also connect to XP machines to stream media using a very slick interface that is friendlier and more usable than any media player I’ve seen before. The same extender technology is incorporated directly into HP’s line of MediaSmart TVs as well, including 2007 models that will get an automatic firmware upgrade when the final code is released.

I’ll have a direct comparison after I get my hands on review units.

Update 10-Jan: The ZDNet news team helped me put together a video clip showing the HP MediaSmart Receiver in action. You can also see Samsung’s entry in the field, which works only with its HD displays and is designed to attach to the back of the set. The unit in this clip is a non-working sample.

My colleague Mary Jo Foley reported earlier today on Microsoft’s claim that it has sold 100 million retail copies of Windows Vista. During Bill Gates’ keynote address last night I heard him say, “I’m pleased to say that we’ve got over 100 million people using Vista now.”

That’s a stretch.

I tracked down a Microsoft spokesperson today who was just as surprised as I was to hear that sentence coming from the keynote stage. The spokesperson confirmed for me that those 100 million copies represent licenses, not confirmed users. And the total includes copies sold through all channels, including those preinstalled on OEM computers, copies sold as retail upgrades or full packaged product (FPP), and volume licenses sold to corporate customers.

Some of those copies are on retail shelves now, either in shrink-wrapped boxes or in PCs waiting to be sold. And there’s no telling which OS is in use for the millions of corporate licenses in the mix, which in most cases grant the right to install Windows XP or Vista.

I covered my first CES in 1979, when I was working as a junior editor for a large consumer magazine. Back then, my beat was toys for my generation, young male boomers - car stereos, home audio, gadgets, and the fierce format war between VHS and Betamax.

Today, 29 years later, CES is about twice as big, and the product categories I cover now were mostly science fiction back then: high-definition television, mobile communications devices, personal computers, GPS technology. But when you strip it down, I’m still covering toys for my generation. And there’s yet another format war involving Sony. Imagine that.

My road map for CES 2008 covers five products and technologies:

Windows Vista Last year at this time, Windows Vista had been released to businesses and a relative handful of insiders. Retail customers were still nearly a month away from getting their hands on the final product. Now, a year later, Vista has had a year of mostly negative buzz, with Service Pack 1 due to be released shortly. I’ll be talking to Microsoft to learn how they plan to position Vista this year. More importantly, I’ll be asking Microsoft’s hardware and software partners about the feedback they’re getting from customers.

HD DVD versus Blu-ray Sony was the big loser in the previous format war. This time, do they get to be the last format standing? Warner dropped the bomb last week with its announcement that it was dropping support for HD DVD and going all Blu-ray starting later this year. But will Blu-ray really win? I’ll be looking at online alternatives to HD content delivery to see how soon any of them have the potential to make physical media obsolete.

PC display technology I’m meeting with Nvidia and AMD/ATI this week to look at what’s in the pipeline from both companies. 2007 wasn’t a particularly good year for either company, as they struggled to deliver products and working drivers for the new Vista display model. Those challenges are mostly solved, and now I’m looking forward to seeing what the two leaders in this category can do to dazzle users, especially multimedia enthusiasts.

DRM The reports of DRM’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, the online music industry is moving away from DRM-protected formats to standard MP3 downloads. But what does that mean for movies, TV, and software? The good news is that I haven’t heard any announcements of new DRM formats this year. So what’s the future of DRM? I’ll be asking that question of just about everyone I meet with this year at CES.

Things that simplify life Technology is wonderful until it stops working, or until it becomes impossible to integrate with the other wonderful technologies it’s supposed to connect to. (Have you tried to set up a home theater system without professional help?) I’ll be keeping an eye out for technologies that actually make life simpler. I heard of two candidates last night and will take a closer look at them this week.

Anything else you think I should look at while I’m here? Hit the Talkback button and let me know.

This morning at CES, Microsoft announced plans to release a minor update to Windows Home Server, to be called Windows Home Server Power Pack 1.

The odd name (not a service pack, not a feature pack) reflects the unusual contents of this update, which will bundle bug fixes with a handful of new capabilities, including these three frequently asked for features:

• x64 Connector software Probably the most eagerly awaited feature is an update to the Home Server Connector software that allows it to install on systems running 64-bit editions of Windows Vista.
• Server backup features The Power Pack allows Home Server owners to designate an external USB drive as a backup device, allowing them to back up the server’s contents.

• More control over backups On both 32- and 64-bit systems, a new option in the Connector software allows users to control whether the system will wake up from sleep to run a scheduled backup task. This option is especially useful for notebooks that are temporarily disconnected from the network.

Power Pack 1 is scheduled for release in the first half of 2008. Since I’m in Las Vegas right now, I can legally place my bet on April or May as the most likely ship date. You can take very short odds that the update won’t ship before a fix for the data corruption bug that Microsoft acknowledged last month. A fix for that bug is in development now, but no one at Microsoft is willing to commit to a release date yet.

A release candidate build of the Power Pack software is in the hands of a limited number of beta testers now. (No public beta is planned.) I’ve had a chance to install it on a test machine in my office, where it’s been running well. I’ve used it to back up and restore Vista x64 systems with no ill effects.

In the Talkback section of my earlier post on XP versus Vista adoption (Who’s choosing XP over Vista?), several commenters pointed to a PC World Techlog post by editor Harry McCracken that they believe contradicts my conclusions. Here’s what Harry had to say:

On January 30th, Microsoft released Windows Vista to consumers, who have been adopting it in ever-growing numbers. But those numbers have been creeping along rather than rocketing: As of now, Vista … is used by 14 percent of visitors, while 71 percent use Windows XP…

How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first eleven months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002. In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com…

Well, that settles it, then. XP was a huge hit in its first year and Vista’s a flop, right? Of course, that wasn’t what PC World was saying one year ago, when it published this report from its parent company’s IDG News Service back on November 27, 2006:

Up to 15 percent of PC users will move to Vista within the first year that the operating system is available, said David Mitchell, the software practice leader at Ovum Ltd. “That would make it the fastest-moving operating system ever,” he said.

By comparison, between 12 to 14 percent of users switched to Windows XP during the first year of its release, Mitchell said. [emphasis added]

That prediction sounded about right then, and one year later that analyst seems to have nailed the actual number.

So, PC World, which is it? Did 36% of the market switch to XP in its first year of release or was it 12-14%? I have no doubt that the stats Harry posted were accurate as far as his website metrics go, but I think those statistics say a lot more about PC World’s website and its unique readership than they do about the larger market.

Everyone knows a crystal ball works better when you’re looking at history from five years ago. Those 2002 numbers in particular don’t reflect the Windows marketplace as a whole. Does anyone really believe that 36% of the market at large adopted Windows XP in the first 11 months after its release? I certainly don’t remember any contemporary reports of XP’s success one year after its release (except, of course, in press releases from Redmond). Instead, I remember headlines like these:

Windows XP Slow to Take Hold - CRN, Oct 11, 2002

On the first anniversary of Windows XP’s release, Microsoft has little to celebrate.

Less than 10 percent of Microsoft’s installed base has upgraded to Windows XP since its release last October. That matches a 2001 Gartner prediction that nearly 75 percent of all corporate PCs would still be running Windows 95, 98 or NT Workstation by the end of 2002.

The adoption rate for the installed base of 250 million Windows users is “pretty small,” said Rogers Weed, vice president of Windows client product management at Microsoft. “We’re trying to kick-start some momentum.”

In fact, all this coverage is thoroughly predictable. Microsoft tries to build up hype in the pre-launch phase, and then customers adopt products the way they always have, as part of the PC replacement cycle. It was true in 2002 with XP, it was true in 2007 with Vista, and it will be true several years in the future, when the next Windows release finally rolls around.