I got your back - Windows Vista SP1 coming sooner than you think
It goes without saying that there has been a considerable amount of feedback around our release schedule for Windows Vista SP1. Don't think for a second that because I'm silent about such issues on my blog, that I am not working our internal communication channels to be your advocate.
Being an advocate means I get an opportunity to assess the situation with my "customer base", which is now world wide, and offer my opinion on what we should or should not do. I've done that in the past and will do it in the future. It doesn't mean I'll get what I want, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
However, I support our product groups and senior leadership decisions. If Microsoft chooses not to release some software when you think it should be released, we usually have a darn good reason for the decision. I am not privy to all of the details of those decisions so when I offer an opinion back to our senior leadership, I can't get away with the type of comments I've seen posted on a variety of blogs and websites this week. I have to be a lot more diplomatic. Diplomatic doesn't mean I can't be direct, and I'm known for being direct.
The good news is that there are some changes coming to the release schedule I think you will like. Keep an eye on the Windows Vista Product Group Blog @ https://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/11/windows-vista-sp1-availability-for-technical-customers.aspx for the update.
You should know that I, and members of my team take IT Pro satisfaction and dissatisfaction seriously. My team no longer just includes the US IT Pro Evangelists. I consider the IT Pro Evangelists world wide to be part of my team and I assure you, there is plenty of discussion around what happened this week. The release schedule was only part of the discussion.
Suffice it to say I listen. So do my peers. You may not always know we have your back, but we do. We try really hard to keep you informed, educated, entertained and happy. It doesn't always work out that way, but we try. So if you're so inclined, give us an F on our report card for the week or month. We'll try hard to get an A+ next time.
With that in mind, come see us at the launch events. We'll have some fun.
[UPDATE for 2/9] I thought Mike and the Windows team were going to provide an update yesterday. Obviously they didn't. Maybe we'll get one Sunday or Monday. Got a crystal ball?
[UPDATE for 2/11] Mike's update is now at the link above.
Comments
Anonymous
February 08, 2008
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February 09, 2008
Keith Combs' Blahg : I got your back - Windows Vista SP1 coming sooner than you think: http://blogsAnonymous
February 09, 2008
It's too late. People are already upset and anyone can download it from the torrents. Might as well save you effort as the damage is done. It's been a week. The process is just too slow at Microsoft. Thank you for helping, but the people above you are apparently jsut too incompetent to understand what developers really are.Anonymous
February 09, 2008
Keith, Thank you for posting this. Did you realize that the press received copies of SP1? In fact, George Ou from Ziff Davis actually posted pictures of the DVD's sent by Microsoft for their testing. I'm not sure I understand why it's good enough for the press to report on it using their hardware knowing that their will be bad driver experiences (and there are already a number of articles describing SP1 as benckmarking slower in a number of areas than the original Vista). That's what is really irking me at the moment. It also seems like this is the last people you would want to send the code to at this point wince they are reviewing the code with the known problems with Microsfot's blessing to do so and tell this to the world. Well, I do have another question. Does this mean there will be two versions of the same service pack after the driver issues have been worked out? If so, I'm not understanding what "Release to Manufacturing" means. Will we have .1 releases for service packs now? Not trying to be funny. Seriously trying to sort this out and understand what is going on. :)Anonymous
February 09, 2008
Keith Combs' Blahg : I got your back - Windows Vista SP1 coming sooner than you think: http://blogsAnonymous
February 09, 2008
The sooner this is released the better, my members seem to be downloading builds from anyware in the hope of finding the RTM build.Anonymous
February 09, 2008
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February 09, 2008
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February 09, 2008
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February 09, 2008
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February 09, 2008
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February 09, 2008
-Boe Hey, that's a great idea! Let's all make a better OS! It should be faster and have more features! How come I never thought of that?Anonymous
February 09, 2008
Keith, I hope that Microsoft will also be providing assistance and/or utilities to help beta testers uninstall the release candidate versions of SP1 they have been testing. The one on my laptop refuses to go !Anonymous
February 09, 2008
http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/02/08/i-got-your-back-windows-vista-sp1-coming-soonerAnonymous
February 09, 2008
Thanks for the response - however as you said - you saw a 50% increase in performance in some cases - I've said it before and I'll say it again - in elementary school you learn 2 x 0 = 0 You can make Vista 4 times as fast in certain functions and it still won't compete with XP. If you are serious about benchmarks, I'd suggest you do what I did - Using identical machines try the following with any version of Vista with any patches - even with any items you want on or off. Now with XP - don't even bother to patch it if you don't want to but make sure it doesn't have any additional overhead you don't have on the Vista machine - e.g. if you don't have AV or firewall on Vista - turn them off on XP just to be somewhat fair. Don't turn on indexing - if you do - just to be fair don't use WINS3 - use google or a better indexing program. File copies and moves to the same hard drive
- a folder with hundreds of files
- a large file 2GIG or more File copies and moves to another drive on the same system
- a folder with hundreds of files
- a large file 2GIG or more File copies and moves to the file server (windows 2003) - try in both directions
- a folder with hundreds of files
- a large file 2GIG or more Gaming performance - use 3 of the most common and check FPS Quake 4 FEAR - any version World of Warcraft I encourage you to run these tests both on an old system (P4) and a new system (core 2) Perhaps you'll become our voice at MS and encourage them to throw in the towel on Vista and hopefully learn from their mistakes when building Windows 7
Anonymous
February 09, 2008
I want to state while I'm seriously unimpressed with Vista, I haven't given up on MS yet. I think that they'll have little choice but to realize that Vista was not accepted by the IT community because of the horrible performance both on new and old equipment. I believe if there are any bright people at MS, they will focus on performance in Windows 7 above all other things.Anonymous
February 09, 2008
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February 10, 2008
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February 10, 2008
Keith, I'm with you on this one. Vista 64 on the right hardware flat out screams. I don't think people realize that software progress in terms of commercial value requires a financial commitment on the hardware. Vista has so many nice new features coupled with rock solid security and amazing application stability - i've not seen anything like it before. I have to give Microsoft credit for releasing an operating system that is apparently too advanced for the average I.T. user. Maybe they're all getting to old ... ;-) If I were to ask for anything in a Microsoft OS, it would be easier navigation. Apple has it down and there would be no shame in designing similar navigation features into Windows. MikeAnonymous
February 10, 2008
Microsoft Releases Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008 to Manufacturing - Client and serverAnonymous
February 10, 2008
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February 10, 2008
The title should be "Windows Vista SP1 coming sooner than you think", not "sooner than you think". No, i don't have a crystal ball, only a couple of hundred dollars that may well be spent elsewhere. Get it?Anonymous
February 11, 2008
Man, why all the hate?Anonymous
February 11, 2008
MSDN Subscriber Downloads Update ... These new things were posted yesterday: Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems (ia64) - DVD (English) English 2/10/2008 1:16:58 AM Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems (ia64) - DVD (German) German 2/10/2008 1:16:58 AM Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems (ia64) - DVD (French) French 2/10/2008 1:16:58 AM Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems (ia64) - DVD (Japanese) Still no Vista SP1. I'm sure all 6 people that use Itanium processors are happy to see the Windows Server 2008 Itanium version posted!Anonymous
February 11, 2008
Well, you'll have to wait a little longer.Anonymous
February 11, 2008
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February 11, 2008
Shollomon, This is not for me to decide. Please provide your feedback to the Windows team on the post at http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/11/windows-vista-sp1-availability-for-technical-customers.aspx. I have no more knowledge about the situation than you do at this point so anything I say would be pure speculation. But you bring up a good point so the best place for the feedback in on the product group blog. Best regards, KeithAnonymous
February 11, 2008
Hello, I sent feedback with 3 or four benchmarks for Vista vs. XP - are links not allowed on this blog?Anonymous
February 11, 2008
Interesting. It appears the official Vista blog is being censored and a number of comments have disappeared. For example, I remember one stating that Mike Nash was doing a bad job. That comment has now disappeared altogether. In fact, searching for "Nash" on the entire page reveals that all trace of anyone mentioning his name in the comments has been removed. I distinctly remember many comments with his name mentioned. If you search the google cache you will see, indeed, that they are now gone from a few days ago. Thanks to Google we can see the deception that is already starting to occur. Wonder how long it will take for the press to pick up on this.Anonymous
February 11, 2008
Thanks for your kind response. I have posted to the product group blog as well. I know you're just the messenger in this case.Anonymous
February 11, 2008
I was going to post something, but after reading sholloman's post, I think that kind of summarizes it. What are these darn good reasons and why can nobody explain them to anyone? Why have these rogue developers not been outed? Why should all the other developers suffer due to a few bad apples? Why is Microosft protecting them? Whew. :) Well, Keith, thank you for addressing this. I understand it's not quite in your arena, but we're all feeling abandoned to strange and arbitrary decisions and we'd love to understand exactly what the situation is with Vista if anyone could explain this in a way that isn't as vague and as obtuse as possible. RTM is just that. RTM. Apparently Mike Nash doesn't understand what RTM really means or something, because stepping back and looking at this, um, Vista SP1 isn't RTM. If it is, then what exactly is the new RTM acronym for Vista? Will it be the same for all Microsoft applications now? They'll all declare themselves RTM and then wait another 6 weeks to put out the RTM.01 versions? :)Anonymous
February 12, 2008
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February 12, 2008
Please provide your feedback to the Windows team on the post at http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/11/windows-vista-sp1-availability-for-technical-customers.aspx.Anonymous
February 14, 2008
I won't get into this whole SP1 mine field as I think there has been enough back and forth on the blogs. Anonymous
February 15, 2008
It's no use trying to pretend otherwise, we didn't do a great job on making Vista SP1 available. SomeAnonymous
February 15, 2008
In case anyone would like to see some updated bencharks with the final release of SP1 - http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1332Anonymous
February 20, 2008
Here we sit. Ignored still by Microsoft. Not a single explanation from anyone as to why this happened, nor a solution to the endless rebooting problem we're all dealing with now. We MSDN users are treated like complete idiots. Who exactly has our back here? Nobody on the Vista team, that's for sure. FIX THE PROBLEMS and COMMUNICATE. Microsoft is doing neither quite spectacularly at the moment. Frankly, I'll NEVER trust Microsoft again. Ever. And that's coming from a person who's bought their bread and butter from MS consulting for over 10 years.Anonymous
February 22, 2008
Chirp Chirp Chirp. Keith, you are all talk and no action. Next time don't embarass yourself and post something that say "I've got your back" if you refuse to answer any meaningful question or do anything to help. This Service Pack 1 mess is so staggeringly incompetent and then on top of it all to have practically ZERO communication on your part back to us that I can't trust ANYTHING you say anymore. That's NOT having our back. That's STABBING us in the back. Keith Comb's Blahg: Nobody has your back at Microsoft.Anonymous
February 22, 2008
Chirp, I haven't responded because I have been busy and there have been no updates for me to give you. I'm not really sure why you are responding to me in this manner. I have no control over what the Windows product group does. Isn't that obvious? The Windows product group has a game plan they are executing. When their plan upsets me or you, I let them know about it. That's what I meant by "I have your back". I can be a conduit for your concerns and hopefully drive change. Sorry you didn't get what you want but it isn't clear to me what that is. Feel free to send me email and articulate your concerns. I'm not really interested in terse anonymous comments. Email me via http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/contact.aspx and I'll be happy to open a more constructive dialog directly with you.