Nick White Sets the Story Straight on SP1

Microsoft product manager Nick White set the story straight through his blog saying that they are in the development & deployment stages of Windows SP1 Beta Version.

Prior to SP1, Microsoft has used the Windows Update service to deliver incremental fixes in Windows Vista. Continually delivering these fixes should be enough and I don’t see a need for an SP1 update other than for marketing and promotional benefits.

Nick White failed to answer why they are going forward in releasing SP1 despite the Windows Update service doing it’s job. He evades the topic and instead goes on to outline the improvements SP1 is going to make primarily on addressing reliability and peformance issues, supporting new types of hardware, adding support for emerging standards, added improvement on IT administration experience. Nick White says that SP1 added functionality on existing components and no added features are expected from the service pack.

Currently, only a selected number of people and companies have officially been given access to the SP1 Beta version as Microsoft thought it would be the best approach to take.

I second that, but hopefully they widen the customer base who are given access to the beta version. As Microsoft said, MSDN and Technet subscribers would be the next customer base that would be given the SP1 version. The final version of SP1 is on target for a first quarter release in 2008.

The full report on the changes that SP1 is delivering can be found here.