Microsoft beta testers have been playing with a few major updates for Windows Vista for a few days now. It's not quite a full service pack release, but the Vista Performance and Reliability Pack and the Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack do include quite a few bug fixes that should make Vista slightly more bearable.The packs should be available to all users through Windows update on August 14th. But if you can't wait (and if you don't mind downloading software from an unofficial source), some folks have taken it upon themselves to release the beta software to a wider audience a few weeks early.
There's a whole slew of features in the update, but here are a few of the most exciting:
- Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
- Improves the performance in calculating the 'estimated time remaining' when copying/moving large files.
- Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
- Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
- Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
- Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
- Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
- Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
- Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
- Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
[via GHacks]
