It says it’s a compilation of all the fixes so far. Well, I’m an obedient little user. I have updated my W7 EVERY week AND I’ve always accepted all, uh, recommended? Important? well, whatever they call the important, non-optional updates. So I’ve already got everything fixed up, right?
The thing is, the damned update is something like 913Mb for the 64 bit version, and I’m on dial up.
Yes, I can DL it from the Microsoft site at work and haul it home on a flash drive, but it says to read a warming document that has a whole raft of ‘if you’re stupid enough not to let the auto updater run, you have to do all these things furst’ and 'be absolutely sure you have update (some number) already installed or else the whole process will come to a screeching halt and you might as well throw your computer out" and the like.
(Okay, some paraphrasing there.)
Anyway…can I skip SP1 without risking a lot of awful things happening? At least put it off for while? Like, until we finally get the internet hookup?
Continue to do the security updates and you’ll be fine. Plenty of large organizations delay SP deployment for months (or longer) until they’ve had time to test and make sure it doesn’t break anything.
I usually only install the Service Packs whenever I have rebuilt the hard drive. I am a lot like you, I check for updates every week. No need to install the Service Packs if you have been diligent about installing updates.
Just checked on my Windows 7; it gave the SP1 update as ~90 MB to ~850 MB. There were four other updates. When I activated the download, it said, “Downloading around 95 MB total”. SO, if you’ve been keeping up to date, presumably you already have a lot of things that were made available as part of SP1.
Dialup, though… might be a better idea to request a disc.
Just to be clear, though, SP1 includes things that are not part of any other update. While it does include a roll-up of numerous crucial patches, it also has some that require more fundamental changes, as well as [very few, this time] new features. It’s more than just a collection of past updates.
I installed SP1 today on my laptop at work, and it also “only” downloaded about 80 MB (for the 64-bit version of Windows 7). I’d go with Sunspace’s suggestion to order a copy rather than tolerating a dial-up download of even just 80 MB. Eventually, there will come a point at which you can’t install updates or even products without SP1, and you might as well get the benefits sooner rather than later.
Well, as I said – we will be getting cable internet, but we wanted to wait until the six foot snow banks were gone. Which will hopefully be melted away by July or so.
