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Vista SP1 Goes Live
3/18/2008
Microsoft Tuesday announced the availability of Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. The company has also posted the upgrade to its download site here.
"Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update," Microsoft Product Manager Nick White wrote on the company's Vista blog Tuesday morning. "For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 -- you can now do so!"
The release was not unexpected; text on Amazon.com discovered this weekend implied the download would be available March 18, with the retail product being released March 19, although the mention of the download has since been removed from the shopping site.
Microsoft has released Vista SP1 for five languages: English, Spanish, German, French and Japanese. Updates for other languages are expected to start rolling out in April.
SP1 releases are typical milestones for Microsoft products as many IT shops wait until the first update before deploying. Vista's update comes a little more than a year after its initial release.
According to Microsoft, the SP1 update is designed to improve Vista's reliability and application compatibility, among other changes.
In his post, White also commented on the driver issue that initially delayed the early release of SP1 to IT professionals. "We've completed our analysis and are happy to report that many of these issues were fixed between the release candidate (RC) and the final version," he wrote. "We identified a small number of device drivers that may be problematic after an update from Windows Vista to Windows Vista SP1."
A list of drivers that may still cause problems with the upgrade is available here (scroll down). White also recommends reading Knowledge Base article 948187 before installing the upgrade.
For now, Vista SP1 is an optional download; it will become a forced upgrade starting in "mid-April" on any computers that have Windows Update set to automatic download.
Becky Nagel is executive editor, Web Initiatives for the 1105 Redmond Media Group and the editor of Redmondmag.com.
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