Microsoft Talks about Vista SP1

Yesterday, just after delivering two of the most important updates for Vista, Microsoft made some official announcement regarding Vista SP1. According Windows Vista Team, Microsoft plans to push Vista SP1 beta to handful of beta testers within next few weeks. And the next major pre-release will be available to a larger group of testers via MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

They don’t want to hurry up and compromise on quality, so they have not decided the final release date yet. However, their goal is to push SP1 out by first quarter 2008. Vista SP1 whitepaper gives us a sneak-peek at the improvements to be seen in the final version of the service pack:

Security Improvements:

• Provides security software vendors a more secure way to communicate with Windows Security Center.
• Includes application programming interfaces (APIs) by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work with kernel patch protection on x64 versions of Windows Vista. These APIs help ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on x64 computers without disabling or weakening the protection offered by kernel patch protection.
• Improves the security of running RemoteApp programs and desktops by allowing Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) files to be signed. Customers can differentiate user experiences based on publisher identity.
• Adds an Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNGs in Windows Vista.
• Enhances BitLocker Drive Encryption (BDE) to offer an additional multifactor authentication method that combines a key protected by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) with a Startup key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated personal identification number (PIN).

Reliability Improvements:

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Windows Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Windows Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Performance Improvements:

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

Service Packs are pretty much worthless, as Microsoft constantly keeps releasing updates and hotfixes via Windows Update. Google which slapped Microsoft with antitrust case regarding Vista’s integrated search feature made it inevitable for them! Vista SP1 is most likely to be leaked as soon is gets into the hands of beta testers.