Vista SP1 - No Go for Me at the Moment

I have been waiting anxiously for the public release of Vista SP1. I had reloaded the Vista disk for my Lifebook S6510 a week or so ago, so that I would have a fresh load ready for update. Today it became available... and although I checked Microsoft Update today, it didn't show up as an optional update. So I was surprised when I read that it had been released. It didn't take much research to find out why...

I have read several times that SP1 was being held up because "certain uncommon drivers" caused problems with it. I had assumed, because they were said to be "uncommon", that I probably wouldn't have a problem because of that. I was wrong. I definitely have one of them, the AuthenTec fingerprint reader, with exactly the driver release that causes a problem. Apparently Windows Update is smart enough to find that out, and that is why it didn't offer me SP1.

I may also have two other problems, but it's not entirely clear to me yet. The list says Intel Graphic drivers between 7.14.10.1322 and 7.10.14.1403; my laptop has 7.14.10.1244, even older than the "problem" drivers, so what does that mean? Is it not compatible at all, or is it so old that it doesn't have whatever the problem with SP1 is? Also, the list says "Realtek AC'97 Audio", but the S6510 has "Realtek HD Audio", I suspect that is not the same, so perhaps it isn't a problem - but I still need to verify this.

The bottom line is, at least in my case, the "uncommon" drivers seem to be a lot more common than I expected. I've just had a chat with Fujitsu support, and they seemed to be totally in the dark about this. On one hand I find that odd, because SP1 hasn't taken anyone by surprise, and the list of offending drivers has been available for some time now. On the other hand, considering how unprepared many (most) OEMs were when Vista was originally released, this would appear to be nothing more than a continuation of that situation - but I had hoped after all the noise made about it, that it would have been better handled this time.