Microsoft didn’t get quite the fanfare it was hoping for when it released Windows Vista to the masses back in January. Even with the marketing muscle of Microsoft, the operating system was met with a tepid response due to the massive system requirements preventing many users from upgrading and the fact that Vista didn’t offer that many compelling features not included in Windows XP.
Fast forward to Vista’s eighth month in use and sales have improved and independent testing has shown Vista to have some performance advantages over XP in different areas. However, as with any new operating system, Vista has its share of problems and annoyances.
Once users have figured out the new places to look for needed options and configuration changes, they find that there are little things like drag and drop that just seem to take forever. Naturally, Microsoft has been releasing security updates along the way as well as two performance and compatibility updates which haven’t yet been offered through standard Windows Update.
Beyond updates, Microsoft will publish service packs which can be a collection of existing updates as well as some new updates and feature releases. The biggest service pack in memory was Windows XP Service Pack 2 which rewrote the book on security in Windows XP.
Now, rumors are floating about regarding the possibility of a new service pack for both Windows Vista and Windows XP. An early beta of Vista SP1 boasts improved performance for handling large numbers of files as well as large files themselves.
Service Pack 3 for Windows XP is rumored to contain Windows Media Player 10 or 11 based on release date as well as a laundry list of security updates. Other possibilities include the most recent version of Office Live Messenger also.
The release dates remain murky at best which isn’t really a surprise when discussing Microsoft code. One estimate for Vista SP1 mentions late, late 2007 while others mention first quarter of 2008. Most of the guesses for XP SP3 are the first half of 2008. Either way, it’s a ways away for most small business users to be able to take advantage of the improvements in both of these service packs.
