Print - It's Official: Windows Vista SP1, 2008 Head to Manufacturing

Monday morning at 6:00 am in Redmond, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008, which were co-developed from the same code base, were released to manufacturing. Vista SP1 is the first major update to Microsoft's desktop operating system and is expected to trigger a new wave of corporate adoption. Meanwhile, Windows Server 2008 is the server-based follow-up to Windows Server 2003 R2, which was released in 2005.

"Microsoft has worked with its partners to significantly improve the Windows Vista experience in Service Pack 1," a Microsoft spokesperson told me. "Customers will especially see enhanced value in terms of security, performance, reliability and application compatibility."

While the schedule for Windows Server 2008 has been well known for some time--Microsoft previously scheduled a Windows 2008 launch event for late February and was widely expected to deliver the product well before that time--that for Vista SP1 was a bit less specific. In a post to the Windows Vista Blog this morning, Microsoft vice president Mike Nash finally explained how users will get SP1. New PCs with Vista and SP1 installed will arrive in "the coming months," while Microsoft's enterprise customers will get DVDs soon. For end users, SP1 will be released via a staged rollout. The release will be made available via Windows Update starting in mid-March, and then only to PCs that don't have problematic hardware installed. In mid-April, SP1 will be rolled out to all users who have configured Windows Update for automatic updating.

Initially, Windows Vista SP1 will be made available in five languages, English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. The remaining languages Microsoft supports will be released to manufacturing in April and ship worldwide after that.

I'll be reviewing Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 on the SuperSite for Windows within the next 30 days.

Why the delay? The bits should go up to the Microsoft Update/Wndows Update services this month (patch Tuesday). MS really needs to get it's act togehter.

"The bits should go up to the Microsoft Update/Wndows Update services this month (patch Tuesday)." do u really want a repeat of the Skype outage from a couple months ago? it's a staged rollout - get used to it! XP

"Paul, how did your Patriots do yesterday?" :-) Didn't they become the first 18-1 team not to win the Super Bowl?

Vista SP1 is BIG. about 600 MB for x86 and nearly 900MB for x64. MS has no choice but to do staged rollout. At those sizes it might actually be cheaper to send a read only 2GB USB Flash drives. get a drive, copy the SP installers over and pass it on.

"Vista SP1 is BIG. about 600 MB for x86 and nearly 900MB for x64." you have to remember that the size of a Vista install DVD is about ~2.4GB, so it's not really that big, considering that people think this is going to be this massively huge rewrite to end all woes caused by lax/crooked hardware & software vendors that aren't supporting Vista. i'm glad that they're sending out new copies in Action Pack subscriptions. i hear there's no options for slipstreaming it into existing media ala Windows XP/2000. can anybody confirm that? i would imagine it has something to do with the complexity of having to extract the WIM image, overwrite the files, then commit changes to it and burn it back to a bootable DVD. BTW: Action Pack subscribers get a bonus: on top of the 10 licenses of Windows Vista Business SP1 x32/x64 (your choice of how you want to divide it up - you get both media), they're also getting a single license for Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (dunno if it's x32 or x64 media, or both). XP

Vista SP1 will initially be made available for end users "only to PCs that don't have problematic hardware installed". Who would that be ?

"Vista SP1 will initially be made available for end users "only to PCs that don't have problematic hardware installed". Who would that be ?" people that bought sh*tty hardware. how much simply can you put it? XP

SP1 is not ready. oh yeah, it will work and it will fix a few issues, but it is an unfinished product. Not only that, but one issue that Microsoft claims they have addressed...slow transfers at the network level...actually has not been fixed...at least that is the way it appears on the three machine I have running Vista. VistaSP1 will be an improvement. That fact can not be argued with, but it is an unfinished product that will cause some users a lot of headaches. I will say this once more. Microsoft needs to get rid of Steve Ballmer and a few others at the top. and while it is a good thing for all us that they are getting aggressive in the market place again, their products are still questionable.

"Not only that, but one issue that Microsoft claims they have addressed...slow transfers at the network level...actually has not been fixed...at least that is the way it appears on the three machine I have running Vista. " Maybe your configuration is bad. There are plenty of ways to improperly set up a network... MS has evidence that throughput has been increased 50% on network transfers. With 55 pages of changelog, I'd say SP1 is as complete as anyone could want it to be. Anything more and we'll have an OS disguised as a service pack, ala XPSP2.

@treeorc - "SP1 is not ready." Much like Linux is never ready and in perpetual development, huh? http://tinyurl.com/36xquf --tayme

"Maybe your configuration is bad." You are joking right? Seriously though, I am well schooled in network setup, but thanks for the advice.

"Much like Linux is never ready and in perpetual development, huh?" Yes, Linux is in perpetual development and so is technology in general. However, I have not made the statement that one should not employ SP1. My point is simply that some issues have not been resolved. Thus, I think Microsoft should have waited on releasing SP1.