It's Official Now:

[Guest Reimar]

Much more earlier as before announced, the SP1 for Vista will be available this month. Ok, it's still a beta but on the other hand it shows that MS is really pushed for to do something.

Read what you can find at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=559

It’s official: We are now in the under-promise and over-deliver era at Microsoft.

Just when Microsoft had customers, partners and competitors all believing that it was going to delay the first service pack for Vista — not releasing a first beta of it until just before year-end — the company is set to deliver Beta 1 of Vista SP1 in mid-July.

Word (from various sources who asked not to be named) is Microsoft is gearing up to drop Vista SP1 some time the week of July 16. And despite what Microsoft seemingly led Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and other company watchers to believe, the final version of Vista SP1 is sounding like November 2007.

(November 2007 is also the release-to-manufacturing target for Windows Server 2008, sources say. Microsoft won’t provide an RTM date for Windows Server 2008, other than to say it is still on track to RTM before the end of 2007.)

If Vista SP1 is released in November, the Windows client team will be sticking to a schedule company officials outlined a year ago, when the official plan of record was to release Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn Server) simultaneously.

Another observation: If Microsoft releases Vista SP1 in November, it will have been in beta for an unusually short four months. In the past, Microsoft Windows service packs could be in beta for a year or longer.

Microsoft officials have been wavering over what to say about SP1 for the past year. Throughout that time, a number of company execs wouldn’t even admit they were planning to release a service pack for Vista at all.

Microsoft’s Windows client team, under Director of Windows Engineering Steven Sinofsky, has adopted a much more restrictive information-flow policy. Instead of over-promising and under-delivering, Sinofsky wants the client team to do the opposite. To achieve this, the client team is attempting to institute Apple-like secrecy over anything pertaining to future Windows client directions.

There was a tiny chink in the Windows organization’s armor in June, when Microsoft agreed to Google’s demand that it alter its desktop-search functionality, seemingly to head off another potential antitrust suit. In late June, the Redmondians said they’d have a Beta 1 version of SP1 (which would include alterations to Vista’s search) before the end of calendar 2007. They declined to provide a date for the final Vista SP1 release.

History aside, what’s on tap to be part of Vista SP1?

Microsoft is expected to emphasize that SP1 is more about fixes than new features. Most of the elements of SP1 are expected to enhance or supplement features that are already part of Vista, sources said.

In addition to desktop-search modifications, here’s a list of other fixes likely to make it in:

* Performance tweaks lessening the amount of time it takes to copy files and shut down Vista machines (Yeah, I know Microsoft said Viista shutdown speed wasn’t an issue. Guess users weren’t so crazy, after all.)

* Improved transfer performance and decreased CPU utilization via support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA)

* Support for ExFat, the Windows file format for flash memory storage and other consumer devices

* Improvements to BitLocker Drive Encryption to allow not just encryption of the whole Vista volume, but also locally created data volumes

* The ability to boot Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on an x64 machine

* Improved success rate for firewalled MeetingSpace and Remote Assistance connections

I asked Microsoft officials for a response on Vista SP1’s timing and feature set. I did not hear back before posting this blog entry. (If and when I do get a response, I will add it here.)

Update: Here’s the response I got from a Windows client spokesman late in the day on July 9: “The Windows Vista team is working hard on the service pack, and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year.”

There may be more in Vista SP1 than what’s on this list. That’s all I’ve heard so far. Anything you’re hoping makes it in that’s not listed here?

[wpcoe]

Anything you’re hoping makes it in that’s not listed here?

Yes, the return of IEEE-1394 (FireWire) networking that worked so well in WinXP.

[Gary A]

How long before SP 2? That will be the time I will consider upgrading. XP Pro is working very well for me. I'm from the school that says if it works, don't change it.

[nikster]

Microsoft has publicly said that SP1 will not appear on that date. All they will commit to is "later this year".

They seem to be right on track with the "under-promise" part of their new strategy so at least 50% of it is working really well

Edited July 21, 2007 by nikster

[cali]

Microsoft: 'Whoa now' on Vista SP1

July 20, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. Thursday quelled rumors that the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was just around the corner.

"There will be a Windows Vista service pack, and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement prior to the afternoon conference call with analysts about Microsoft's quarterly earnings.

Talk had mounted since late last week of an impending release of an SP1 beta on such blogs as istartedsomething and All About Microsoft. None of the sources quoted, however, specified whether the beta would be open to all or on an invite-only basis; the latter is typically a step in Microsoft's testing process prior to offering a beta to all comers.

"Service packs are part of the traditional software life cycle -- they're something we do for all Microsoft products as part of our commitment to continuous improvement," continued the spokeswoman, "and providing early test builds is a standard practice that helps us incorporate customer feedback and improve the overall quality of the product."

The company has played SP1 close to its vest -- even to the point of disputing early on that one would be necessary. But as part of the deal brokered with antitrust regulators in June, Microsoft came close to promising the update this year. SP1, said Microsoft, will include several agreed-upon changes to Vista's search tools, part of its effort to blunt criticism from Google Inc., which has argued that the operating system makes it difficult at best for third-party desktop search providers to compete with the built-in features.

"Microsoft will deliver the required changes in Service Pack 1 of Windows Vista, which Microsoft currently anticipates will be available in beta form by the end of the year," read the 27-page joint status settlement report (in PDF format) released one month ago.

Microsoft continued to downplay the importance of SP1. "Clearly there will be a SP1, but at this stage, we're not talking about exactly when that is," added Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell during the earnings conference call this afternoon. "We don't see it as a massive driver of uptake in its own right."

SP1 holds special importance to Vista because many large corporate customers have said they will hold off deploying the new operating system until the update has gone final. Liddell, however, countered that thinking to some extent today. "It's early days yet, and we're broadly happy with how we're seeing Vista adoption, but we always expected that the business uptake would be driven by their needs rather than the availability of Vista [sP1]," he added. Another mark of Microsoft's reticence about discussing the future was revealed last week, when the company took the time to say it had nothing to say about the next version of Windows. Around that same time, a thread on Microsoft's own enthusiast site, Channel9, discussing an invite-only list of recommendations for Vista's follow-on was locked. The post was later deleted.

[cdnvic]

This is why you don't get news from blogs

[Deserted]

Similar to XP then. I think the moral of the story is don't buy a windows operating system when it first comes out.

[Crushdepth]

Installing a 'beta service pack' isn't the last thing in the world I would ever do, but its close.

[cdnvic]

Similar to XP then. I think the moral of the story is don't buy a windows operating system when it first comes out.

Actually, Vista is working just fine. I question the need to even have a service pack right now. The big issue for this one was to address complaints from Google about the Live Search being too integrated.

Operationally, Vista is fine. In fact my young copy of Vista needs far fewer updates than my mature XP installations, and it runs so much better than XP that I've pretty much abandoned the older OS and have no qualms going to Vista as I replace the older machines.

[Gumballl]

It appears the the OP found out the hard way to hold his thoughts (and fingers) before reporting false news... err rumours. From what I read, MS made a mistake announcing that a SP was being readied for release for Vista. MS (almost) immediately retracted that statement and instead stated that the SP was slated to be delivered for Server 2008 (and not Vista). Perhaps a SP will be available for Vista later this year... perhaps.

[sjaak327]

Similar to XP then. I think the moral of the story is don't buy a windows operating system when it first comes out.

Actually, Vista is working just fine. I question the need to even have a service pack right now. The big issue for this one was to address complaints from Google about the Live Search being too integrated.

Operationally, Vista is fine. In fact my young copy of Vista needs far fewer updates than my mature XP installations, and it runs so much better than XP that I've pretty much abandoned the older OS and have no qualms going to Vista as I replace the older machines.

Couldn't agree more.

There is no need for a service pack, but of course if Microsoft has some additional features in store, I won't mind

[Deserted]

I think the majority of previously reported problems with vista have come from software compatability. Quite a few people I know bought it soon after it came out, installed it and then found they couldn't use their software and switched back to XP. Ealier this year, the computer magazines I read had many letters from people having similar problems. If the most recent updates have managed to solve those problems then that's all well and great. I guess we can all look forward to using a hassle-free Vista quite soon then.

[tjo o tjim]

It sounds like it will be a long time before MS expects real uptake of Vista-- they actually are telling the analysts that they expect to have year-over-year growth in XP sales through 2008!

[cdnvic]

It sounds like it will be a long time before MS expects real uptake of Vista-- they actually are telling the analysts that they expect to have year-over-year growth in XP sales through 2008!

Actually, Vista is the fastest selling OS in Microsoft's history. The sales of XP will not grow over FY2007's numbers, but will be higher than first projected due to increased licences being sold to legacy networks in companies that are still using XP. This is nothing new. As Windows98 and NT were being rolled out MS was still shipping Windows 3.11 to companies who's networks still comprised the older systems. Windows95 was available to retailers until a year after Windows 2000 shipped, and for system builders right up until the day XP was released.

XP will be withdrawn from retail and OEM sales by Jan 31, 2008.

[Guest Reimar]

The latest news about Vista SP1.

Collection of published Vista SP1 API changes from MSDN

Published July 22nd, 2007 by Long Zheng

Windows Vista SP1Microsoft might choose not to tell its enthusiasts anything about Windows Vista Service Pack 1, but they can’t afford to keep it a secret to the development community. For the same reasons some argue SP1 is the Holy Grail for Windows Vista, a newer kernel means changes to a very significant component of an operating system. However since this is a significantly minor update to the kernel compared to what was endured just months ago, APIs have already been added, changed and even obsoleted.

Since Microsoft wouldn’t publish any documentation of their own for the time being, here is a list I’ve compiled from the MSDN Library of all the changes taking effect in Vista SP1 published to-date. Whilst most of these documentation won’t make sense for non-developers (myself included), think of it like reading a foreign-language newspaper - find all the proper nouns then make up the story.

Read the full article