Microsoft restrains site offering Vista SP1 patches

Microsoft’s legal team has issued a cease and desist order to a website hosting a number of patches that the site claimed would be released with Vista service pack 1a (Vista SP1).

The owner of Hotfix.net, Ethan Allen, has removed the patch download links, but the site still contains plenty of information available about. Allen claims to have gotten most of his information from Microsoft’s own Knowledge Base.

The site even contains updates that will supposably form part of Windows XP SP3, though Microsoft won’t admit it. You can check your update list; some of them will be listed as being part of SP3 for XP.

XP SP3 is under developed, and is due out in the first half of 2008.

No updates as part of Vista SP1 have been released and there is no release date for Vista SP1 as a whole, though it is believed that it will be out before the end of the year.

Microsoft did not want the SP1 updates distributed it says it has not completed testing them.

According to the company: “It is important for Microsoft to work directly with customers to ensure they are downloading a hot fix that may be designed to resolve a specific technical issue, rather than having them download haphazardly from other websites.”

Since when has Microsoft worked closely with customers? I guess they are just referring to their review process when they begin testing updates. Then how did they miss the recent ANI flaw for over two years, even they don’t have the answer to that.

Microsoft is advising users not to install any patches that claim to be part of Vista SP1 from any site except from their own update system.

It is sound advice but the kicker is that SP1 doesn’t even have security fixes in it; SP1 is all about improving functionality.

I guess Vista just needed a few more months before it was ready. I don’t think they could have afforded to delay Vista any later.

They could have and we might have gotten a better operating system but impatience from everyone, pressure from Microsoft management and just a general feeling that Vista should have been ready on schedule got us a somewhat rushed operating system.