It’s now the middle of the week of July 16, 2007 and there is no more of a sign for Vista SP1 beta showing up than there was when the week began. Microsoft has been tight lipped about Vista SP1 beta but there are those of us with a few nagging problems on Vista that SP1 (even the beta) might be able to fix.

A select few testers are already working with early versions of Vista SP1 beta. This week’s Vista SP1 beta source code will be opened up to more testers and will be a code refresh. That could mean two things. It could be a private beta that only knowing the right people get you invited to test it or that could be the anticipated public beta of Vista SP1.

Microsoft is still doing its best not to discuss Vista SP1 as it wants people to buy Vista now and not get distracted by the rumor of a possible service pack release, if that’s what the company has been trying to do, it has failed.

Some of the improvements for Vista will include, performance tweaks to reduce file copy and shut down times, support for ExFat for flash drives, improvements to Bitlocker drive encryption, the ability to boot systems with EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) as opposed to the older BIOS systems. Just as a side note, Macs use EFIs.

Microsoft was basically forced by the hand of the DoJ (Department of Justice) at the request of Google to provided changes to the desktop search in Vista allowing users to change to a desktop search tool of their choice. These features were then to be included in Vista SP1 for a release in 2008. Google wasn’t happy and the DoJ is forcing Microsoft to release a version of Vista SP1 this year, final or not.

The company is not happy with Vista SP1 as it feels the whole project has been “rushed” and will feel slightly incomplete when it is released.

There’s still no final word on if a public beta of Vista SP1 will be released this week but last time I checked, Vista SP1 final is due out in November 2007. Rushed or not, some form of Vista SP1 will be out this year.

Vista SP1 beta could still be released before the end of this month but that’s not as early as some of us were hoping for.

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Related:

Vista SP1 not to be released until 2009

Yahoo Messenger for Vista still unavailable

Will Vista SP1 beta ship this week?

Vista SP1 public beta due next week

Palm Desktop beta for Vista released

Entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 4:23 am under Microsoft, Upgrading, Vista.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.