Vista SP1 was RTM earlier this month, and they announced a laid-back release schedule.
Their plans for slowly rolling it out to end users sound great, but I have to wonder why Microsoft doesn’t plan on releasing SP1 to IT Pros through TechNet until it’s publicly available for users to download.
This seems like negating the entire point of the TechNet community if you ask me. It’s there so its members can get their hands on essentially all of Microsoft’s software for testing and pre-deploy purposes. Several Windows 2008 Server builds have been on TechNet, and it was available for full download the day it went RTM. Why, then, is Vista’s service pack different?
Update: Per the rumors, the release schedule for SP1 has indeed been changed, so that technical users get updates sooner than expected.
- Beta testers got it Friday (RC2 was identical code, so they actually already had it), because that makes so much sense.
- Volume License customers will get it the end of this week.
- MSDN and TechNet users won’t get it until later this month.
I still don’t understand why we’re waiting for TechNet. If nothing else, those users should get it at the same time VL customers do - they’re likely one and the same people.
I was waiting to rebuild my Vista box at home1 until SP1 was available, but it looks like that’s still going to take too long. Maybe I’ll move ahead with my plan to make that box a Windows 2008 Server and using my Ubuntu laptop as my primary machine…
- Which I’ve pretty thoroughly trashed. ↩