Following a flurry of Web reports, Microsoft confirmed Monday that the much-anticipated Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system will ship today to manufacturers along with Windows Server 2008.
Chief Executive Steve Ballmer made the announcement this morning in a presentation to analysts, according to Reuters and other sources. For Vista, he said, “we think we are turning the corner in terms of enterprise adoption and deployment and we think Service Pack will be a big boon.” Server 2008 had been scheduled to be officially launched at the end of February.
The Distribution ‘Ecosystem’
The release of SP1 was also confirmed with a posting today on the Windows Vista blog. Vice President Mike Nash wrote that he has been running Vista with SP1 for a few months and he’s noticed his systems “run faster and more reliably than they did with the ‘Gold’ release of Windows Vista.”
For instance, he said, copying or moving files on a PC, a home network or a corporate network “should now be much faster — up to 50 percent faster in some scenarios.” He also noted that resuming a task from sleep is faster with SP1. Microsoft has said that SP1 is designed to increase the performance, reliability and compatibility of Vista.
Nash also outlined the distribution “ecosystem.” Within the coming months, he said, new versions of Vista with SP1 will be available and original-equipment manufacturers will start producing PCs with SP1 preinstalled. He added that the rollout to existing Vista customers will be “approximately concurrent” with the availability of SP1 on new PCs.
SP1 will be available through Windows Update and the download center at Microsoft.com by mid-March, which, Nash said, will give the company time to work with hardware manufacturers to adjust device-drive installations. He said Microsoft’s analysis is that the difficulties between drivers…