Nick White has provided us with an update on the latest tests for overall responsiveness between Windows Vista, Vista SP1 and Windows XP at the official Windows Vista Blog.

Microsoft has once again commissioned Principled Technologies to do some testing on its latest OS to see just how much of a real world performance gain it provides over it’s predecessors in both home and office environments. To be honest, there isn’t all that much to write home about.

Some of the key findings listed by the company note that the increase in overall responsiveness of Windows Vista SP1 over Vista RTM and Windows XP, if any, are nothing more than fractions of a second.

The tests conducted ranged from various typical home user tasks such as opening up a program or editing and saving a file, to various business oriented tasks such as running system searches, creating Excel, Word and other various office files, saving and sending emails as well as launching and using Adobe and Quicken applications.

Overall, I wouldn’t be bragging about any performance gains. Any increase in responsiveness greater than a second was a rare sight in the company’s findings. On most of the tests conducted, differences ranged from zip (or “natta” if you prefer) to roughly half a second.

The only situations in which there was any noticeable difference in results, were mostly with Adobe and Quicken applications while running on Windows Vista SP1, which at times were up to 6 seconds faster over Vista RTM and Windows XP.

So what does this all mean for you? Well, if you’re running Windows Vista SP1, the next time you launch Microsoft Outlook, cheer up and know that it is taking approximately 0.31ms less to load than on Windows Vista RTM.

Have a look at the full reports right over here.

Running Mac OSX Leopard? Looking for improved system stability and a refined UI? Then do I have some good news for you! Mac users were surprised with a nice treat today, with the release of the long awaited 10.5.2 update for Leopard. And it seems like Apple really is a good listener (he’s single too, ladies), the update focusses on several complaints that users have been reporting regarding Leopard’s UI since day one.

Among the list of issues fixed/improved is Stacks, users can now select a List view in addition to the standard Grid and Fan views for heavily occupied folders, as well as choose to display the stack as a Folder, eliminating the cluttered look. Also on the roster is the Menu Bar, now with the added option to enable/disable transparency to solve some text visibility issues depending on the wallpaper. And Time Machine has now found a new little niche in the Menu Bar (via icon) for easily accessible controls and status updates for backups and such.

But it’s what’s on the inside that counts right? Included in the update is the standard “reliability updates” to several programs including Time Machine, Safari and iSync and adds support for additional routers to “Back to my Mac”. Of course, there’s much more where that came from.

Unfortunately, it appears a few things didn’t make it to the finals. The ability to choose between the 3D “Shelf” dock or classic styled dock appears to have been removed from the final release and it seems as though Safari 3.1 just wasn’t ready for the spotlight yet (funny, but not “ha ha” funny, pun intended).

So don’t wait any longer and get the whopping 343MB update over here.

Now the question is, will Vista users be this satisfied with SP1?

Well, if you weren’t satisfied with all the rumors going around, you’ll be happy to hear this. Jeff DaVos, one of the many Windows Vista SP1 beta program leaders, has graciously confirmed for us via the Connect newsgroups (shhhh!) that Windows Vista SP1 build 18000, otherwise known as Release Candidate Refresh 2, and the build which was Released to Manufacturing on Monday are indeed one of the same.

“Windows Vista SP1 build 18000 is indeed the RTM build. We were hoping build 18000 we released to you (WU only) was the final build and as it happens we didn’t have to break the glass, the build didn’t change at all from the time we released it to you and our final sign-off on Monday morning this week.”, Jeff says. “What you got is what we’re all running our Vista machines here internally – we definitely RTM’d”

So if you’re lucky enough to already have Refresh 2 installed on your system or have it tucked away on your hard drive somewhere, there’s no need to go running around torrent sites looking for RTM, cause you’ve already got it.

Jeff also mentioned that they have heard our complaints regarding SP1’s availability, and are working to push SP1 onto Microsoft Connect for tester’s to enjoy.

Cheers for clearing that up for us, Jeff

Update: Aaaaand… I’ve been kicked from the program.