Windows Vista Service Pack coming in '08

Microsoft announced that it will ship a public beta of its service pack for Windows Vista by the end of 2007. The public ship of Windows Vista SP1 is expected in the first quarter of next year.

"It is not a delivery vehicle for lots of features", says Shanen Boettcher, General Manager in Microsoft Windows unit.

The Vista update, it's mostly a collection of existing fixes and tweaks aimed at improving stability and reliability of the operating system.

Here are some of the features that Vista SP1 will include:

1. A collection of previously-released and new security fixes, bug fixes, and other updates.

2. A major update to the Windows kernel to bring the Vista kernel (version 6.0) up to date with the version in Windows Server 2008 (version 6.1).

3. A change to the Kernel Patch Protection ("PatchGuard") feature in the Vista kernel that prevents security companies like McAfee and Symantec from integrating as tightly with the OS as they could in previous Windows versions. This will include a set of APIs aimed at helping developers write code that interacts with this security feature.

4. A change to Vista's Instant Search feature that will allow third party desktop search product makers to more closely integrate their products with Windows Vista. In the initial shipping version of Vista, the Instant Search indexer still runs at full speed even if a third party product is installed, reducing overall system performance.