Summing it up, he says that SP1 'adds surprisingly little to Windows 7' and 'there's not a single significant enhancement'. In the Windows Secrets newsletter, Woody Leonhard recently offered a summary of the new features in the service pack. Many others have offered their opinions on installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1. If you are re-installing Windows 7 from scratch, the first thing to do is get up to speed on disk image backups. I have read recommendations that if you are re-installing Windows 7 then the first thing to do on the newly installed copy is to install SP1.

This way, problems surface before you have become dependent on the machine, while tech support is still available and while restoring to a factory fresh state is a viable option. Then, when you are reasonably confident the machine is not a lemon, would be a good time to install Service Pack 1. What about new Windows 7 PCs without SP1?Īs with any new computer, you should initially kick the tires as much as possible. I waited much longer on Windows XP Service Pack 3, but Windows 7 seems more mature.Īccording to Computerworld, sometime in April the first new Windows 7 machines will ship with SP1 pre-installed.

My best guess is to hold off until August 2011, which would give SP1 about five months of exposure to everything the world has to offer. How long to wait, however, is a matter of opinion. The decision to wait is, to me, a no-brainer. To be clear, my point is to wait, for now, not to avoid SP1 forever. From what I've read, the improvements in Windows 7 SP1 are trivial and/or irrelevant to most users. Any pessimism needs to be weighed against the improvements offered by the new bug fixes and/or new features. Given sufficient time, affected vendors may include fixes in new releases, make patches available or, at the least, document a work-around.Ī service pack contains three things: previously released bug fixes, new bug fixes and new features. Waiting, allows time for software vendors to discover any incompatibilities with the new service pack.

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