With the advent of Windows Vista in 2007, the latest Windows client, and the product that could have done with a tad more refinement according to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, a barrage of criticism started orbiting the operating system. In this respect, one of the areas where Vista took most of the fire was intimately connected with its performance. As the comparison with its predecessor, Windows XP, was inevitable, fingers were pointed at Vista, while the contrast revealed a consistent difference in performance. Microsoft's official position was to explain the matter by emphasizing the evolution of the hardware infrastructure of Vista-ready PCs and the system requirements for Windows XP.

"One of the other things I often get questions about is performance. People often say to me that XP out performs Vista on their new machine. Well that should be no surprise really. Guess what, if you run Windows 2000 on that machine - it will be extremely quick! Quicker still will be Windows 95 and Windows 3.11 will be faster still. So would you install Windows 3.11 on your machine? No of course not, because although performance is great, you sacrifice security and functionality. Windows XP will continue to run faster on newer and faster hardware - it's no surprise - but so will Windows Vista," revealed James Senior, Microsoft U.K. Partner Technical Specialist.

At MIX08 in Las Vegas in early March, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer acknowledged the fact that Vista suffered from application and driver compatibility issues, but at the same time he failed to mention performance issues. As far as performance is concerned, Microsoft's position was that the latest Windows client brought to the table "revolutionary memory management" as well as "support for innovative hardware advances" and that the operating system delivered in this manner advanced performance. But of course Senior is right. XP simply flies on a Vista-ready machine since it was designed to run on hardware configurations dating back to 2001. The same will happen with Vista when it will be run on computers from 2013, for example. Still, Microsoft promises better performance today following the release of Windows Vista SP1.

"SP1 further improves Windows Vista performance in response to customer feedback. For example, SP1 improves file-copy performance. In some scenarios, SP1 reduces by half the time required to copy large file collections. Power transitioning is another example. SP1 improves the speed of resuming computers from standby mode. Performance improvements vary from system to system, depending on hardware, environment, scenarios and usage; therefore, different customers will experience different benefits," Microsoft revealed in the Vista SP1 Product Guide.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system is available for download HERE.