PC World posted a short advance review of Windows Vista Service Pack 1’s performance on their web site today. Their verdict? Service Pack 1 improves Vista’s performance in some areas such as copying files, but is slightly slower in others. In her tests, article author Melissa Perenson notes a 9% performance improvement in her file copy test (copying 1.9 GB from a flash drive to the PC’s hard drive). Startup and shut down times are mostly unchanged in SP 1, but had very slight improvements (hin her tests, Perenson noted a slight 3-second improvement in startup times and a 1-second improvement in shut down time). Meanwhile, archiving five 500 MB files in a ZIP archive took slightly longer under SP 1.

Perenson notes that “based on my informal tests conducted in the first hours of having Vista Service Pack 1 in hand, it’s hard to draw any hard and fast conclusions.” Needless to say, more tests are on the way.

Windows Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing on Monday, and will be available for download in March. Okay, let’s stop right there for just a second. Why is it, that despite Vista’s relatively poor reputation, Microsoft decided in their infinite wisdom to keep SP 1 out of the hands of users for another month? If it’s ready, it’s ready. get it out to the people. Come on, guys.

Maybe they need to redesign the box?¹

At any rate, Deep Thought will hopefully have something to say about SP 1, uh, whenever we get our hands on it. Hey, Mr. Ballmer, sir? You wouldn’t have an extra press review copy of Vista SP 1 you could spare, would you?

¹Thanks, Arden. ↩