Today Nick announced the availability of the release candidate for Windows Vista SP1. I had a chance to get the RC build of Windows Vista SP1 installed a few days ago. I decided to roll the RC out on all of my PCs which showcase a variety of device types and scenarios:

• My Main Desktop PC running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 - check.
• My Test/Work PC running Windows Vista Business - check.
• My Dell Vostro 1500 Laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate - check.
• My Samsung Q1 UMPC running Windows Vista Home Premium - check.
• My Digital CableCard PC running Windows Vista Home Premium - check.

In installing the RC on my PCs, I did a combination of using the standalone installer and Windows Update. Before proceeding to install the SP1 RC bits, I first needed to uninstall the SP1 beta bits first. Users looking to install the Windows Vista SP1 RC will need to uninstall any previous version of SP1 prior to the installation of the RC from either Windows Update or the standalone installer. With Windows Update, once SP1 was downloaded, a new series of screens telling me about SP1 appeared. The same series of dialog screens

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Today we’re making available the release candidate (RC) of Windows Vista SP1 via Microsoft Connect, and tomorrow subscribers to TechNet and MDSN will have access to those RC bits too.  In addition, the RC will be available to the public next week via Microsoft’s Download Center. The release candidate phase of beta software is typically the final phase before the RTM (release-to-manufacturing) of a product and indicates that the code has attained a significant level of performance and stability.

Let me call out several changes made since the Beta release of Service Pack 1 — many of which came about as a result of direct feedback from our Beta-testing community (thank you!):

• The size of the standalone installers have decreased significantly. For example, the standalone installer packages consisting of all 36 languages (x86 and x64 chip architectures) are smaller by over 50%. The standalone installer packages consisting of just the 5 languages (again, x86 and x64) slated for initial release are more than 30% smaller in size.
• The required amount of disc space for SP1 installation has also decreased significantly. Furthermore, with the RC, if more space is required to install SP1, an error message will now display exactly how much space is needed

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Microsoft is well on its way to delivering the first service pack for Windows Vista. Currently, the exact availability date for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is up in the air, Microsoft having offered only a general timetable that points to the first quarter of 2008. And with Vista SP1 intimately connected with Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn, at kernel level, the first service pack for latest Windows client from Microsoft is synchronized with the company’s last 32-bit server operating system. The official launch of Windows Server 2008 has been set for
February 28, next year, and Vista SP1 is bound to keep up the pace wit the server platform.

In mid July, Microsoft debuted the testing of Vista SP1 outside of Redmond. A preview of the first beta of Vista SP1 shipped to a select pool of testers at that time. (more…)

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