Microsoft downplayed the importance of this service pack because they didn’t want organizations to wait for it. Microsoft’s official stance is that service packs are not important anymore since we have now Windows Update, anyway. Well, I counted 390 hotfixes that were not publicly available before. All in all, SP1 contains 479 patches. So the majority of hotfixes are new! There are also 109 new features included, but some of them have been released before. Microsoft is not specific about which of them are new.

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Mike Nash announced that Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing today. It is quite disappointing that SP1 will be available for download only in mid-March. I find this a bit strange, to say the least of it. Sometimes it seems to me that Microsoft still lives in a time before the Internet.

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Microsoft published new release notes about the release candidate of Service Pack 1 for Vista. They are mostly about bugs and workarounds. The PCwizKid blog claims to have information that SP1 will be released on Feb. 4.

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I can’t help it, but join this speculation game. Several sources have information about the release date of Windows Vista SP1. It seems as if Windows Vista SP1 will be available on February 15.

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Some days ago, I mentioned that there are rumors that Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 might come out on January 16^th. Well, as it turned out now, those were nothing other than rumors, even though they were spread by usually well-informed sources. InfoWeek reports that the original time schedule is still valid. That is, Windows Server 2008 will probably be released at the end of February.

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Robert McLaws ran a performance test with the refresh of Vista SP1 RC which I blogged about yesterday. He compared the performance with a patched Vista RTM using PCMark Vantage. This benchmarking program leverages specific Windows features such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, etc.). McLaws ran this benchmark on systems with Vista x86 and Vista x64. The results are quite interesting.

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The new release of Service Pack 1 for Vista that has been available for some days already for the more privileged beta testers can now be downloaded via Windows Update. As usual, you have to download a script first. It adds some registry keys which will make SP1 visible at Windows Update. Note that you have to uninstall prior versions of this SP. Also note that you will have to do the same when the final of Service Pack 1 comes out.

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Microsoft finally offers SP1 RC for Vista as a public download. You can download it as standalone package or via Windows Update. It seems as if Microsoft just published that little trick that could be found on some blogs for some days now. Supposedly, this was just the way, the more privileged beta testers used to get this download. It changes some registry keys which lets Windows Update recognize if your computer is a valid target for this service pack.

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Microsoft released a couple of white papers that discuss in detail Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. I just skimmed over those five documents. Not all of them are really worth reading. In this post, you’ll find a brief comment to each white paper. There is one paper that includes some revealing information.

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It seems as if Microsoft is making progress with Service Pack 1 for Vista. Technet and MSDN subscribers can download it now. According to Computerworld, it will be available next week. But just like before with SP1 Beta, there is also a little hack that allows you do download it right from Windows Update. Since it is a release candidate it might make sense to check it out to see if the problems you had with Vista are solved now.

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