I’ve installed Vista SP1 on several machines. Takes ages, but otherwise it’s been without incident.
This does not dramatically improve Vista (in my experience); but then again, it wasn’t that bad before. It does seem to speed up Explorer and zip extraction. It tames UAC slightly – some operations that used to require several prompts now only require one. Otherwise, I haven’t noticed much change, though I’m aware that it includes numerous small updates.
What I do find interesting is that Server 2008, which has the same core as Vista SP1, is delightfully smooth in comparison to Vista. Just don’t ever install the Desktop Experience on 2008 – this is a separate feature that is off by default – or whatever it is that makes Vista still somewhat prone to sitting and thinking when you want to get on with your work.
I only recently installed Vista for the first time, and it was Vista w/SP1. I decided I would use vista w/vmware and move into a virtual xp pro instance so I could a) keep my sanity and actually work and b) start getting used to vista. As IT Director of a company w/500 employees, all of whome currently run XP Pro sp2, we need to get serious about learning to deploy and support vista in Enterprise environment.
So far, both vista and office 2007 seem so different and difficult to support, but that’s just because we simply don’t know the UI.