From Ryan Groom,
Your Guide to Business Security.
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With the release of the long awaited Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) last week came a host of issues almost instantly posted to Internet forums. “This doesn’t work, that doesn’t work”. I decided to take a look at the hoopla in order to give you an informed decision about whether to upgrade your Vista to Service Pack 1.

Personally, I have been waiting a long time for SP1. I use Vista at home, but have veered away from it at work as too many people have had too many problems with it. If you are a techie and enjoy playing around with something new, Vista is perfect for you...as long as you can fix it. If you have to maintain a small to medium business with Vista, you are going to be spending a lot of time at the help desk answering calls.

Reasons to Upgrade

One of my biggest concerns was slow data transfer across a network. More often than not I would go to move a large (bigger than 2 GB) file across a local area network and I would have Vista report that it would take 48245 days. Now I am a patient man, but that is a little extreme.

Many companies also wait until the first Service Pack release of a new operating system until they even think about switching from an established Operating System already in use. So this is a very important. But what exactly are you getting with this SP?

The download is available from Microsoft as a manual download (set to be automatic in Mid April). The overall size is approximately 450 MB. However, set aside a good 1-2 hours to do the upgrade. The process is simple and mainly hands off, but there are times when you are staring at an unmoving progress bar for minutes on end. Best to walk away and schedule updates after hours on a few computers at a time. Once installed, the system looks the same but has had a few major revisions under the hood. These include:

Enhanced Device Compatibility. SP1 supports just under 80000 devices out of the box which is almost double originally shipped with Vista. Vista certified devices have also increased to about 18000 including many laptop functions.

Enhanced Application Compatibility. Many applications now work smoother with SP1. Many applications that didn’t work before now do. However, you will still want to verify if your mission critical applications still work with SP1. There have been reports of certain Anti Virus/Spam software not working as they should.

Network Improvements. Gone are the 48245 day waits to move a 2 GB file. Responsiveness for file copy operations is noticeably improved. Microsoft is touting anywhere from 40-70% increase of file transfer capabilities. In my opinion this was one of the biggest detractors from deploying on my client’s machines. It is a welcome addition.

Security. What would a major service pack release be without security improvements? Vista SP1 is no different. Microsoft touts that users are much less likely to be affected by malware or spyware due to improvements in Windows Defender.

So Do I Upgrade?

So ultimately, do you upgrade or wait? As with any upgrade strategy, testing is key. If you are a small to medium size shop with some fairly technical people on staff, then upgrading to Vista SP1 isn’t going to be that much of a bother. If you are a shop of novices, you may want to buy your techie friends a case of whatever it is that they drink, and ask them to help with the upgrade.

The bottom line is that if you are using Vista and you have tested to ensure all of your software is compatible, upgrading is the best thing you can do.