It’s official that Windows Vista SP1 is under development and was deployed for Beta Testing. Nick White who is the product manager of Windows Vista confirmed the reports and says he wanted to set the story straight.

What I cannot understand is why he needs to explain the introduction of the Windows Update as their new way of delivering changes to consumers while explaining that the release of SP1 would deliver specific reliability and performance issues they have identified during customer feedback. He goes on to discuss details on what SP1 is but never mentioned why the need for SP1.

It is no brainer that Windows Vista SP1 is simply to appease the public’s growing concern for the need of a service pack to boost their confidence in moving in to the new operating system. It doesn’t matter if Windows update can perform its technical job very well since it does poorly in marketing the stability of Windows Vista.

Anyways, Nick says that Windows Vista SP1 should be released to consumers during the first quarter of 2008. The beta version has been released to a small number of customers as they thought it was the best option to take. The next step would be to release the SP1 to a much wider audience which includes MSDN and Technet subscribers.

A detailed outline and explanation of the changes to expect from SP1 is found here.