Monday, August 6, 2007

Windows Vista SP1 Beta

Now, there is little secret of the fact that Microsoft is dogfooding Windows Vista SP1. The first screenshot of the next stage in Vista's life was leaked as early as May the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles. But there is a big step between the Redmond company running Vista SP1 internally and an eventual public beta of the service pack.

Microsoft revealed that Vista users should not expect a public beta of the operating system in the "immediate future." Such a release is only expected to be made available sometime by the end of 2007 with all hints pointing to no later than early November. And of course such a scenario supports the possibility that the final release of Vista SP1 will be delivered all the way in 2008, sometime after February.

Windows Vista SP1 shares the same core as Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn and the company did offer previews of what the service pack will bring to the table. Outside of upgrading the operating system's kernel to the version included into Windows Server 2008, and the altered default Windows Desktop search mechanism, SP1 will compatibility, performance and reliability updates as well as the evolution of DirectX 10 to DirectX 10.1.

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