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I feel a great disturbance in the Vista. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Yes SP1 has been released….

And true to my nature as the ultimate procrastinator, I never got around to upgrading my Vista machine to SP. Instead, since I have three other PCs (including a new XP laptop) I’ve made do with one of them for any computer needs. Most of my procrastination was due to the fact that Vista is a stubborn bitch, and it was basically gonna damn near require a new harddrive if I wanted to upgrade to XP. So it never got upgraded….

And now SP1 has been released with little fanfare, universal contempt and not a small amount of contempt. So what the hell, I’ll give it a shot. Let’s see how this goes….

Prep Work

As any user of Microsoft products knows prep work is absolutely essential for any sort of upgrade, new installation or even if you plan on walking away from your computer for more than 1.7 seconds. Oh it doesn’t really make anything easier, but at least it makes you feel that none of it is your fault, you did your part, and Microsoft did theirs by bending you over and having their sodomastic way with you.

So read up on all the guides, reviews and FAQs I could find on SP1. Basically there are two schools of thought on SP1. The first, coming mostly from Microsoft, is that SP1 revolutionizes computing, cures male pattern baldness and injects puppies into every orifice of the planet. The other school of thought comes from….well everyone else, and basically holds that SP1 is going to make your computer crash, require 27385 resets to install, sends all your credit information to Bill Gates, and then has sex with your grandmother’s dog.

My grandmother doesn’t have a dog, so I figured I was safe. I briefly considered getting drunk enough to make this experience less painful, before concluding the world just didn’t have that amount of alcohol. Looks like I’m flying sober for this one….

Installation

The download was deceptively simple. Clearly it was awaiting it’s perfect opportunity to strike.

The installation was amazing in it’s contradictions.

It first requested to restart my PC, which I granted the required 23 times, and then upon restarting claimed complete ignorance of having restarted. This gives the installation an cute annoyance that utterly failed to be endearing.

Then the SP1 update to Vista took longer to install that Vista itself. This amazed me and I was quite sure something was wrong, until it occurred to me that the update itself was running on Vista, hence explaining it’s poor performance.

Finally, having no doubt filled my harddrive with landmines and Hello Kitty porn, the installation process finished.

Dare I dream???

Results

No I shouldn’t….

Despite it’s impressive list of “fixes“, near as I can tell SP1 made approximately one change to my system. It added a little piece of text to the system setup area indicating it’s running Service Pack 1. That’s about it. Which I have to admit is a rather breathtaking string of text. The contrast with the background is just right. And the text is just the right thickness to stand out but not be ostentatious. Still not sure why it took several years to accomplish it though.

Yeah, Vista still sucks.