Although Microsoft claims the pace of Vista adoption is at more than twice the rate of its predecessor, Windows XP, many large corporate customers have said they will wait for the first service pack for Vista to deploy the software across their companies. While SP1 has yet to arrive, the software giant has rolled out some fixes to improve Windows Vista's speed and reliability.
The so-called comprehensive reliability, compatibility, and stability update (KB 941649) addresses a plethora of issues, including laptop battery life improvements, better stability of wireless network connections and reduced startup times of the operating system.
In addition, four separate updates address reliability and application compatibility issues in Microsoft's XML Core Services (KB 941833), 12 fixes to Vista's USB components (KB 941600), improve Windows Media Player (KB 941651) and patch Media Center (KB 941229). While these fixes are available for download now, Microsoft recommends that customers who are not experiencing problems wait until they are released as part of SP1.