Mike Nash at Windows Vista blog announced today that the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been shipped! I have been very excited about this release, but I will have to wait another month. Even though they have already shipped SP1 to manufacturers, Microsoft will be making SP1 available on Windows Update in mid-March due to some concerns about a subset of drivers, for which they would like to have a smoother roll out. You can read the full explanation in Mike’s announcement.
Understandably my experience with the SP1 beta was not very good, but I am hoping that the final product will be much better. I can’t wait to upgrade.
Here is the SP1 Windows Update time line posted by Mike.
- In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
- In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
- The remaining languages will RTM in April.
Now I am curious to go search the web for ways to make this available before mid-march :).