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Windows Server 2008, Vista SP1 Released to Manufacturing
2/4/2008
Windows 2008 has been closely tied to its desktop counterpart, Vista, since the beginning. Vista, released to the public a little more than a year ago, has had a rocky history. Microsoft is counting on SP1 to be a turning point in its acceptance by corporations and the public in general.
The two OSes largely share the same codebase, and were developed to work tightly together. But Vista has been a sales disappointment< /a> for Microsoft, despite pronouncements< /a> of its popularity.
Many complaints had to do with a lack of application compatibility. A blog posting on the Vista team Website by Mike Nash, corporate vice-president of Windows Product Management, acknowledged the problem:
"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."
Vista SP1 will cure a lot of those problems. Additional upgrades include reliability and performance improvements; increased ease of deployment; and Kernel Patch Protection Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which will make it easier for third-party security developers to integrate their products with Vista.
Another change unveiled in SP1 relates to local search. In response to a legal challenge from Google, Microsoft made it easier to find third-party tools for searching a local desktop. Microsoft's version, called Instant Search, will now be on a more even footing with offerings from companies like Google.
Along with those changes, another major reason for Microsoft to be hopeful about increased adoption of Vista with SP1 relates to tradition. Normally, a large percentage of companies wait until the first service pack of a new Microsoft OS before they will consider putting it into production. There is always a certain amount of wariness about the buginess of a first release of a product as complex as Vista, and it's assumed, fairly or not, that the bugs will have mostly been squashed with the first service pack.
According to a blog posting on Microsoft's TechNet Website, Windows 2008 will be available for commercial purchase March 1. Microsoft's Nash listed several different timeframes for the availability of Vista SP1.
In mid-March, Vista SP1 will be released to Windows Update and Microsoft's download center. About a month later, SP1 will start to be pushed out to automatic download customers. Also sometime in April, versions with languages that weren't supported in with the Windows Update release in March -- English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese -- will be RTMed.
Keith Ward is online news editor for the Redmond Media Group. You can contact him at kward@1105media.com.
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