Microsoft Announces Info on Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Service Pack 3

Microsoft has announced some details on the availability of Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Service Pack 3. Here is a quick run-down, but you can read more here.

Vista Service Pack 1

• Expect Vista Service Pack 1 during the first quarter of 2008, but that date might change based on beta testing.
• It is not designed to significantly change the UI or cause regressions in application compatibility
• It will be around 50mb in size
• In addition to bug and performances fixes, updates already released through the Download Center and Windows Update, other additional support contains:
  • can now boot via EFI onan X64 machine
  • support ExFAT, which is a new file format for flash memory storage
  • support for SD Advanced DMA Support, to improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization
  • includes support for SSTP – Secure Sockets Tunnel Protocol for VPN tunneling
  • Better BitLocker Drive Encryption to also encrypt any or all locally created data volume ( ie – not only the c:, but also d:, e:, etc)
  • better printer management within a Terminal Server session
  • an update to Disk Defragmenter to control which volumes get defragmented.
• SP1 will be released in two waves: support for English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. Then, about 3 months later, a service pack containing all 36 languages will be released

XP Service Pack 3

• They are targeting the first half of 2008 for SP3.
• It will include security updates and hotfixes. There are no new features in Windows XP SP3, with the exception of Network Access Protection, which is a capability in Windows Vista that is only being made available on Windows XP SP3, and will require Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008

• targeted to RTM first quarter 2008. Look for a joint Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008 launch on February 27 in Los Angeles