With roughly a year under its belt in the consumer space, it's
time for Vista to get a tune-up. As was the case with Windows 2000 and Windows
XP before it, that tune-up comes in the form of Service Pack 1 (SP1).
Microsoft took great strides to improve application
compatibility, driver support, security and reliability with SP1. Other
improvements include 50% faster file copying and faster resume speeds.
Microsoft issued a steady stream of beta
and release
candidate (RC) versions of Vista SP1 over the past six months, but today
Microsoft is finally putting its gold seal on the RTM version of Vista SP1. Although
SP1 went gold today, it will not be available until March.
SP1 will first be available in five languages (English,
French, Spanish, German and Japanese) from either Windows Update or a as a
direct download from Microsoft.com. Users who are running systems with
problematic drivers will not be offered the SP1 download via Windows Update according
to Mike Nash, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Windows Product Management.
The next phase of the SP1 roll-out will begin in April. “We
will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have
chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system
that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully
will not get SP1 automatically,” said Nash. “As updates for these drivers
become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which
will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is
that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are
confident they will have a good experience.”
Windows Vista was released to manufacturing on November
30, 2006. Microsoft then followed up with a consumer launch on January
30, 2007. The operating system hasn't
exactly won over as many people as Microsoft would like, but sales of
Microsoft's latest consumer operating system remain
brisk.
The steady sales are due in part to strong
sales of notebooks and desktop PCs which more often than not come pre-loaded
with Vista.