Although I'm late to the party in reviewing Windows Vista SP1, it's becoming widely available as I write this, so now is as good a time as any for my review. Rather than try to cover every improvement in SP1, I'm going to cover my particular experiences. Read my review.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on how to authenticate a Mac to Active Directory. At the time, I was running OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on my Mac Mini and integrating with AD worked fine. I've since upgraded my Mac to OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and noticed a lot of BBODs (Bouncing Beach Ball of Death). I've used other really fast Leopard-based Macs, so I figured it must be something other than a Leopard performance problem.
I tried logging in as an AD user and had to wait several ice ages for the desktop to come up. Some quick research revealed that Leopard's Active Directory integration is broken in Leopard, including in the latest 10.5.2 update. MacWindows.com has done a great job cataloging all the problems, workarounds and potential fixes in integrating Leopard with Windows. After browsing the long, long list of issues and trying several of the workarounds, I eventually found the fix: Disabling Bonjour. This cleared up the logon speed problem, BBODs and other general performance problems I had been having with Leopard. The problem is that disabling Bonjour can break stuff, so I'm hoping Apple gets these issues fixed quickly.
Without wading too deeply into the OS wars, Apple is getting a break here where Microsoft wouldn't. If Windows Vista had completely broken directory integration, especially after two updates, people would be screaming. I'm just interested in a real fix no matter who makes the software. I updated my Mac OS X Active Directory article to reflect these issues.
Windows Vista SP1 review 
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