“Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will be a standard service pack that will include security updates, hotfixes, as well as limited other changes focused on improving quality.” - Microsoft

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer wants you to think that first major update to Windows Vista, Service Pack 1, won’t be released for a long, long time. That’s because he knows that an overwhelming number of businesses and institutions won’t make the jump to Vista until they perceive it as reliable, which traditionally begins with Service Pack 1. Microsoft wants you to upgrade sooner than later. Although Ballmer swears Microsoft hasn’t set a date, and routinely avoids answering questions about updates to Windows Vista, an official timeframe has been set. Microsoft has invited a select group of customers and partners with whom Microsoft is interested in holding “an ongoing dialogue on pre-release code” to test alpha and beta builds. The invitations included that the update will ship in the latter half of 2007.

What’s Really Holding Vista Adoption Back

The business release of Windows Vista in November 2006 proved many computer makers were unprepared for Windows Vista and did not deliver drivers to customers. Today some major manufactures still haven’t provided working device drivers, and this has many customers fuming. It seems that even some “Windows Vista Certified” products don’t yet have drivers. In some cases customers have found Windows Vista Update automatically installs the wrong system drivers putting a system into an infinite cycle of crash-reboot-crash. Microsoft should have been more proactive in working with system manufactures, or made Vista backwards compatible with Windows XP drivers.

Filed under: Microsoft, Software