The Release Candidate will provide one of the final chances for users to provide feedback to Microsoft on which features in the operating system still need to be improved.
By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek
December 5, 2007 04:48 PM
Microsoft on Wednesday made an almost final version of the first major update to its Windows Vista operating system available to testers and said it plans to make the software widely available to the public next week.
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC (Release Candidate) is now available as a download for testers on the company's Microsoft Connect network. On Thursday, members of its TechNet and MSDN communities will have access to the software. It will publicly available starting next week, according to a statement posted on the company's Vista development blog.
The Release Candidate will provide one of the final chances for users to provide feedback to Microsoft on which features in Windows Vista SP1 still need to be improved.
As it stands now, SP1 contains a number of features designed to enhance Vista's performance and stability. Among other things, the software offers a patch that will allow users to run the BitLocker encryption tool on multiple hard drives. It also improves the speed at which the OS wakes up from "hibernate" mode.
SP1 will also remove from Vista the so-called Kill Switch -- a feature that deactivated key components of the software if Microsoft detected users were not running a properly licensed copy.
A beta version of Vista SP1 has been available to testers for some time now. RC1 contains several new improvements designed to make the upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows Vista SP1 less painful. For instance, the standalone installer packages have been reduced in size by 50%. Also new is an automatic disk cleanup utility that erases a superfluous, 1-Gbyte directory that's created during the SP1 installation process.
Microsoft is hoping that Windows Vista SP1 will quell some of the disappointment that greeted the operating system's initial roll out earlier this year. Many corporate users complained about its resource requirements and lack of compatibility with existing applications.
A recent InformationWeek survey found that 30% of businesses do not plan to upgrade their corporate desktops to Vista as a result of such concerns.
Microsoft said the final version of Windows Vista SP1 will be available in the first quarter of 2008.
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