﻿ Microsoft unconcerned over Vista SP1 incompatibility | ZDNet

Microsoft unconcerned over Vista SP1 incompatibility



Speaking at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover on Tuesday, Microsoft's third-in-command, Kevin Turner, told ZDNet.co.uk that the software giant was not concerned by the problems that Service Pack 1 (SP1) has encountered with some third-party programs.

"No, [we're] not at all worried," Turner told ZDNet.co.uk. "We've had several million downloads of SP1. We're very excited about it. It still hasn't been officially released, but we're excited about it."



The programs SP1 has been breaking are mostly from security vendors, including Trend Micro. Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder and head analyst of Kaspersky, told ZDNet.co.uk that, while the security company has not yet itself encountered any difficulties with SP1, Microsoft could lose customers if it does not sort the reported problems out.

"With Microsoft Vista, there are problems with usability; Microsoft has had complaints as its system slows down machines," Kaspersky told ZDNet.co.uk. "Microsoft should pay more attention to the usability of its systems. If they don't do that, they won't be in so good a position against Mac OS X and Linux."

Kaspersky said that SP1 difficulties may have a negative effect on people's opinion of Vista, and that negative effect may impact Vista sales.

"They probably made a mistake — the same mistake they made in 1991," said Kaspersky. "In 1991, they released MS-DOS version 4.0 and it was not so light as version 3.0 — it took up more resources, which meant less memory for user apps. [When] Microsoft released version 5.0, it was as light as 3.0 and fixed the problem."

Topic: Operating Systems

Tom Espiner

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  • Microsoft unconcerned over Vista SP1

    They have never been concerned about problems with all of their other releases, why now? Vista, with SP1, will be installed on almost every computer on the sales shelf, and since they have a monopoly why should they be concerned. Consumers have been tolerant of windows many faults and dismiss it as "thats just the way computers are."