Microsoft accelerates Vista SP1 Release Date; MSDN, customers only volume

Microsoft backpedals delay in the release, said that this month will release SP1 to select developers

Despite announcing that SP1 for Windows Vista was completed and released to manufacturing, Microsoft angered many IT professionals when it said that it would not be releasing products until March. Microsoft said that by contrast only releasing the RTM SP1 to testers. As the service pack fixes a number of key performance, safety and compatibility problems, many developers were eager to get their hands on it, and became unhappy with the delay.

Now Microsoft is seeking to defuse discontent with the announcement that at the end of this month will be the release of SP1, ahead of schedule, MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers. As many developers MSDN subscribers, this probably stifle much of the ill will toward Microsoft.

Better still, Microsoft announced that English-language volume licensing customers will receive even more rapid deployment, and will receive SP1 released at the end of the week. Some developers foreign language may be disappointed, however, that Microsoft did not indicate when the foreign language versions will be released, or whether their release would be beaten up at all.

The first customer who received the RTM SP1 were testers who participated in SP1 Beta. These testers of the last bits of SP1 on Friday.

Windows SP1 introduces support for a number of key hardware and software standards, including the file system exFAT, 802.11n wireless networks, VPN connections on IPv6, and Secure Socket Tunneling. For fans of the games Direct X 10 is updated to Direct X 10.1, which includes small improvements in the delivery iterative and a handful of new tools for the benefit.