On Monday (February 4th), we announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).  Overall, people are excited to hear that we have reached this milestone, but some are disappointed they are not able to immediately download it.

In my blog post on the subject, I noted that we were going to make SP1 available to customers in stages to make sure we delivered a great experience.  As I explained, one reason for this is that we are working through an issue with a small set of hardware devices that may not function properly after the Windows Vista-based PC they are installed on is updated to SP1.  This is an issue with the way the device drivers were re-installed during the SP1 update process, not with the drivers themselves — these drivers worked on Windows Vista RTM and they work on Windows Vista SP1.  For new PCs with Windows Vista SP1 pre-installed, this is not an issue. 

We are working with the manufacturers of these devices to get the drivers and their install programs updated, and also working on other solutions we can use to ensure a smooth

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Hi, Mike Nash here from the Windows Product Management group at Microsoft.  Today we are excited to announce that we have released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista to manufacturing (RTM) for our first set of languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese).

Service Pack 1 is a very important milestone because it addresses many of the key issues that our customers have identified with Windows Vista over the last year both, directly and through programs like the Customer Experience Improvement Program.  With Service Pack 1, we have made great progress in performance, reliability and compatibility.  One of the great things about my job is that I get to play with the latest builds of our products — I’ve personally been running Windows Vista SP1 pretty exclusively for a few months and I’ve noticed that my systems run faster and more reliably than they did with the “Gold” release of Windows Vista.

When we first released Windows Vista last year, there were lots of customers who had great experiences, but some had issues finding applications that worked well on Windows Vista; others had problems finding the right device drivers for some of the hardware devices that they used.  The

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Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 

For those of you who are considering the migration of your desktop and server infrastructure to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, we have good news for you!

As we’ve announced at TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcelona last November, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team is going to release the expanded version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 called Microsoft Assessment and Planning 3.0 (aka MAP).

In short, MAP is an automated agent-less network-wide inventory and assessment tool that can quickly determine if your organization’s desktops and servers are ready for migration to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

What do I mean by AGENT-LESS inventory?  Simply put, it means that you do not need to launch any software agents on any of those machines you want this tool to inventory and query - so no more security concerns and user interruption!

It offers quick network-wide inventory of machines and generate hardware and device compatibility reports with actionable recommendations in the form of auto-generated proposal documents - perfect documentation for your IT project planning in the new fiscal year!

The best part is that

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Tomorrow, Tuesday 8 January, we are releasing several non-security update packages via Windows Update.  The updates include the regular monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool and Windows Mail Junk Mail Filter, two updates in our regular series of Windows Vista updates (KB943302 for application compatibility and KB943899 for reliability and performance), and one update of particular notice: KB935509.  Similar to previous updates that enhanced Windows Vista’s performance and reliability, these updates will be distributed automatically through Windows Update.

Tomorrow’s KB935509 release is a little different than past updates.  It is a prerequisite for installing SP1 and is applicable only for Windows Vista Ultimate and Enterprise users, because it only affects versions of Windows Vista supporting BitLocker Drive Encryption.

This update modifies the boot loader to enable successful install or uninstall of the service pack if the PC uses BitLocker encryption.  We’re releasing it now to lay the groundwork for future updates and to eliminate any extra reboots by installing it along with updates that already require a reboot.  For more information on the update, see KB article KB935509 (which will be posted on Tuesday morning).

In addition to KB985509, there are two other

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We’re making available today the RC release of Windows Vista SP1, found here on MSDN and here on TechNet, with an FAQ here.  I invite you to download, install and use the SP1 RC and let us know about your experience by providing your feedback here.

Before you install SP1 RC, please bear in mind the following points of advice, detailed in this short article:

• If you have a prior version of SP1 Beta installed, you must uninstall it prior to installing RC.
• This is pre-release code and will change before the final release.
• This pre-release software is provided for testing purposes only.  Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission-critical systems.
• Microsoft recommends that you backup your data prior to installing any pre-release software.
• Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate is time-limited software.  It will no longer operate after June 30, 2008 and should be uninstalled prior to that date.
• Support is through self-help and peer support via the Windows Vista SP1 forum.  Assisted support (phone, email and online chat) is not

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Measuring the performance of an operating system is a tricky thing.  At the same time, it’s the right and necessary thing to do, because performance is one of many criteria important to customers.  Part of the trick of measuring performance is to time testing execution with the product cycle such that the results are as meaningful as possible for customers; this helps them make a better decision by making use of the full array of available information.  As one example, about a year ago we commissioned a firm called Principled Technologies to conduct a study comparing Windows XP SP2 to Windows Vista RTM.  That study found the performance measures of the two operating systems were within the same range for many tasks that home and business users frequently perform under real-world conditions.

My point is that we waited to conduct these benchmarking tests until Windows Vista had reached the RTM milestone in the product cycle, as this allowed us to provide our customers the most meaningful data available at the time — the data most likely to directly affect their decision to upgrade to Windows Vista.  We do a whole range of

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