Windows Vista Service Pack 1 in Q1 2008

Vista Service Pack 1 is likely to be released to manufacturing in the first quarter of 2008, will not be as significant a feature release as Windows XP Service Pack 2. It will roll up many of the incremental performance and security updates Microsoft has been making since last November.

“SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards,” Vista product manager, Nick White, wrote. “SP1 also makes additional improvements to the IT administration experience.”

While the company discussed no new features per se, existing features will be updated. For example, the BitLocker Drive Encryption tool, new to Vista, will be changed to allow users to encrypt multiple disk volumes, not just C:, Microsoft said.

Copying and extracting files will be faster, Microsoft said. Recovering from hibernation will also be quicker, as will Internet Explorer 7 running JavaScript. Using file shares and logging in have also been tweaked to improve performance, the company said.

Most recently, a small survey of IT managers conducted by Forrester Research found that most respondents are waiting for SP1’s release before seriously considering their upgrade plans. Application compatibility and hardware requirements remain key concerns. Source: CBROnline

Frankly I would recommend businesses to wait at least till SP2, if they at all switch. Why would any business customer switch over Windows 2000 or XP to a slower graphics intensive operating system?