Well they finally did it. No, no no they didn’t release it yet. Today is kind of a teaser for all of us out of the pre-beta loop. We have all heard the industry chatter about Microsoft sending SP1 out to a group of beta testers, and now they are saying all of us can soon enjoy testing the beta ourselves. Nick White over at the Windows Vista Team Blog writes about the new addition to Vista and what changes and fix’s we are expecting to see. I am very impressed by the whitepaper write-up posted by Brandon Leblanc that follows Mr.White’s introduction. A lot of updates and fix’s. This really looks like it might actually be the key to unlocking Windows Vista.

I assume everyone wants a list of all the major fixes, and yes they fixed the file transfer issues as well. But like I said it’s in beta form, hurry up and just give it to me in omega form!

“The updates in Windows Vista SP1 fall into three categories”

• Quality improvements, including all previously released updates, which address reliability, security, and performance.
• Improvements to the administration experience, including BitLocker^TM Drive Encryption (BDE).
• Support for emerging hardware and standards, such as an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and an Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT).

Security Improvements

• Provides security software vendors a more secure way to communicate with Windows Security Center.
• Includes application programming interfaces (APIs) by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work with kernel patch protection on x64 versions of Windows Vista. These APIs help ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on x64 computers without disabling or weakening the protection offered by kernel patch protection.
• Improves the security of running RemoteApp programs and desktops by allowing Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) files to be signed. Customers can differentiate user experiences based on publisher identity.
• Adds an Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNGs in Windows Vista.
• Enhances BitLocker Drive Encryption (BDE) to offer an additional multifactor authentication method that combines a key protected by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) with a Startup key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated personal identification number (PIN).

Reliability Improvements

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Windows Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Windows Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Performance Improvements

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

They say the full release of SP1 is slated for the first quarter of 2008!
If you want the detailed information from the Introduction to the Whitepaper head on over to the Windows Vista Team Blog.

All I can say is that I am ready for the WOW!