Windows Vista Service Pack 1
Reckon you won’t upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That’s looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft’s latest email blast.
The company has put out a call for “customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07 (calendar year 2007).”
Microsoft hasn’t released details of exactly what changes will be wrought in Vista SP1, which has been assigned the codename ‘Fiji’ but some OS components which missed the RTM cut-off will almost certainly be rolled into the update.
One of the candidates for this better-late-than-never brigade would be the Windows PowerShell, previously Microsoft Shell — a .NET-based command line shell with its own scripting language.
However, the Redmond clarion call declares that “regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues as are the primary focus for the Service Pack.”
So, yes, the still not-yet-released Vista has “high impact issues”.
Testers will be enrolled in the Vista SP1 “Technology Adoption Program” and “must be willing to provide feedback and deploy pre-release builds into production environments.”
In exchange, Microsoft promises they will have “an opportunity to influence product changes including the opportunity to work directly with product groups influencing their short term and long term goals”.
Channels of communications back to the mother ship will include weekly LiveMeeting sessions, “onsite events and regular conference calls” with “24/7 production support for the Service Pack throughout the program.”
There’s also a clear desire to ensure that SP1 is rock sold. One of the goals for TAP testers will be to “validate the stability of Windows Vista SP1 through production deployments” says the email.
“It’s important that customers deploy the Service Pack into production environments within 30 days of a milestone release. Issues will surface from the deployments as well as throughout the program as end users test its limits thought their day-to-day activities. The Windows TAP team will work with customers to identify and drive these issues.”
If Vista SP1 scrapes in by December 2007 it will have been 11 months since the OS itself debuted — the same length of time it took for Windows XP to get its first service pack. However, Microsoft is almost certainly aiming for a much earlier arrival, perhaps to overcome the reluctance among consumers and businesses alike to plunge headfirst into Vista. This is most often espoused in the conventional Windows wisdom which suggests waiting until Service Pack 1 ships.
So how do you get invited to sit at the cool kids’ table with all the other TAP folk? This isn’t a program for mere mortals. Microsoft suggests that interested users contact their” Technical Account Manager at Microsoft to get nominated”.
The Chosen Ones will be expected to “deploy pre-release versions of Service Pack 1 into production environments at each major milestone (Beta, RC, RTM) within 30 days of the milestone release, actively provide feedback on all builds made available to them” and also “meet or exceed predetermined deployment count goals for each milestone.”