The Windows Vista SP1 update designed to prepare PCs for the imminent release of the service pack has been pulled by Microsoft, following reports that it endlessly rebooted Vista PCs.

One fix - the death of the so-called Kill Switch - will be welcomed by many, as we'll explain later.

One of the biggest benefits Microsoft touts for Vista SP1 is faster performance, notably the speed with which it copies files to local disks and across networks.

But on our test machine, copying to local disks and across networks with Vista SP1 is generally slightly slower than pre-SP1 Vista, and lags far behind Windows XP.

It's not clear whether our results will bear out when compared to many machines. Microsoft says, in fact, that its internal testing shows speed improvements of up to 50 percent when copying files. So be aware that what you get on your machine may be dramatically different than what we found on ours, or what Microsoft found on theirs.

One fix - the death of the so-called Kill Switch - will be welcomed by many, as we'll explain later.

One of the biggest benefits Microsoft touts for Vista SP1 is faster performance, notably the speed with which it copies files to local disks and across networks.

But on our test machine, copying to local disks and across networks with Vista SP1 is generally slightly slower than pre-SP1 Vista, and lags far behind Windows XP.

It's not clear whether our results will bear out when compared to many machines. Microsoft says, in fact, that its internal testing shows speed improvements of up to 50 percent when copying files. So be aware that what you get on your machine may be dramatically different than what we found on ours, or what Microsoft found on theirs.

Slower copying?

A persistent complaint many people have had about Vista has been the speed with which it copies files, both to a local machine and across a network. One of Microsoft's goals for SP1 was to speed up that copying. Tests on our PC, though, show that (for one machine at least) copying appears to have slowed down compared to pre-SP1 Vista, and remains significantly slower than XP.

We created four test benchmarks using a dual boot XP-Vista laptop with a 1.83Ghz Duo Core processor and 1 GB of RAM. First, in XP, we copied one 256MB folder filled with 63 files and subfolders to a local disk and then to a network disk on another machine. Then, still in XP, we copied one 2.49GB file to a local disk and to a network disk on another machine. After that, we did the same tests for pre-SP1 Vista.

We then upgraded Vista to SP1 on the dual-boot machine, and performed the same tests. In all instances, we did the test several times before recording results, in case any caching was going on, or in case Vista's SuperFetch technology came into play. And we did each test at least three times to make sure the results were accurate.

We found that copying a large file - 2.49GB - to a local folder under SP1 Vista was 20 percent slower than performing the same operation in pre-SP1 Vista. Copying that same file to a network folder took, in essence, the same amount of time in pre-SP1 and SP1 Vista. And copying a 256MB folder full of files to a local disk and to a network folder took, in essence, the same amount of time in each as well.

XP was three times as fast as both versions of Vista copying a folder of files to a local disk, and more than twice as fast as both versions of Vista when copying a folder of files to a network folder.

XP was slightly slower than pre-SP1 Vista when it came to copying a single 2.49GB file to a local folder, and slightly faster than SP1 Vista. And XP was slower than both versions of Vista when it came to copying a single 2.49GB file to a network folder.

What numbers are we talking about here? SP1 Vista took 193 seconds to copy a 2.49GB file from one folder to another on a local machine; pre-SP1 Vista took 161 seconds; and on XP, it took 178 seconds.

Copying the single 2.49GB file to a network folder took, in essence, the same amount of time in SP1 and pre-SP1: 233 seconds in SP1 versus 237 seconds in pre-SP1. Both versions of Vista beat XP, which came in at 296 seconds - the only test in which XP was slower than both SP1 and pre-SP1.

When it came to copying the 256 MB folder (which was full of lots of smaller files, including multiple subfolders) Vista SP1 and pre-SP1 performed just about identically, and dramatically slower than XP. Copying the folder to a local disk took 36 seconds in both versions of Vista, and only 12 seconds in XP.

Copying the folder to another machine on the network took 101 seconds in Vista SP1, 98 seconds in pre-SP1, and only 39 seconds in XP.

Death of the kill switch

The change in Vista SP1 that has garnered the most publicity is the death of so-called Kill Switch (which Microsoft prefers to call "reduced functionality mode").

Currently (pre-SP1), if you don't activate a retail version of Vista after 30 days, or if you ignore a three-day grace period you're given after making so many hardware changes that Windows is no longer considered valid, your desktop turns black, the Start menu and desktop icons disappear, and you can only copy your data files, but you can't open them. In addition, after you use Internet Explorer for an hour, you're logged off.

In SP1, the Kill Switch in essence becomes a Nudge Switch. You'll be frequently reminded that you need to activate Windows, and the desktop background will turn black. Try to change it to another background, and an hour later Windows will turn it black again.

In addition, you won't be able to download signed drivers and optional updates via Windows Updates, although you'll still be able to get critical security updates. And you'll still be able to use Vista.

Why should you care about this if you've already validated your copy of Vista? The Kill Switch is part of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation system, and that system has caused nightmares for people and enterprises because of Microsoft glitches.

In August of 2007, many Vista and XP users found their Windows systems disabled by Microsoft because of a Microsoft WGA server glitch. The Kill Switch went into effect on many machines that had validated their version of Windows, and countless people no longer had access to their PCs. With SP1 and the death of the Kill Switch, that should no longer happen. That alone is reason enough to upgrade.

Verdict

Should you upgrade to Vista SP1? We'd say yes. The elimination of the Kill Switch alone is reason, by itself, to upgrade. If it's true that Vista will be more reliable and more secure under SP1, that's another good reason as well. If Microsoft is to be believed, most people will get performance benefits as well, although on my system, we found copying to be slower, rather than faster. Still, we're keeping SP1 on my PC. The slowdown in file copying is a minor annoyance, and it's a small price to pay for ensuring that the Kill Switch will never go into effect.

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