Microsoft regularly releases updates for its Windows operating systems to fix problems, close security gaps and generally make things work more smoothly, but every so often it also produces larger updates called Service Packs. The last one was Windows XP Service Pack 3, which added lots of important and useful new security features. Now Microsoft has released its first for Vista - but what does Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1 for short) do, and should you get hold of it? Small, but powerful In the past, many people have complained about the size

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of Microsoft's service packs, and it appears the company has been listening. There are two ways to get hold of SP 1, but obtaining it via Windows Update requires a download that's around 65MB. This will take a few hours to download for those with dial-up internet connections, but only minutes via broadband. It's certainly better than Windows XP SP2, though, which totalled 250MB.



There's another version of SP1 that can be downloaded directly from Microsoft's website, although this is a huge 450MB file. The reason for the difference is that Wmdows Update only downloads the parts of the file that you need. So, for example, other languages that are not used on your computer are not downloaded, whereas the service pack version contained on the website includes them all.