A super-important story for Vista users that I just posted to WinInfo:
In my recently published article, "Inside Windows Vista Service Pack 1," I revealed that Microsoft was preparing a second wave of performance and reliability fixes for its latest client operating systems. This week, the company made those fixes available in four separate updates, and Microsoft tells me that it will soon deploy them via Windows Update, as it did with a similar set of fixes from August.
The four patches, which are currently available as manual downloads from Microsoft's Web site, address a wide range of issues. These include fixes to Vista's core USB components, Media Center, and Windows Media Center 11. The fourth fix generally addresses "compatibility, reliability, and stability" issues with the new OS. (See download URLs below.) While the software giant calls the updates incremental and subtle, they make some interesting changes to the OS: Startup and sleep time is reduced, battery life is extended for portable machines, and wireless connections are made more reliable.
While Microsoft plans to roll these fixes in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), they are not available in the current beta version of that update, but will rather ship in a future beta release. Vista customers who are experiencing compatibility, reliability, and stability issues should consider downloading these updates.Vista Updates (Microsoft)
October 2007 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista
Cumulative update rollup for USB core components in Windows Vista
Update to improve the compatibility, reliability, and stability of Windows Vista
Update for Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista (32-bit)
Update for Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista (64-bit)Reference
Inside Windows Vista Service Pack 1