One more announcement that crept out this week… Microsoft has released Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update. Although the service pack was RTMed a few weeks back, it has only been available for download to a subset of customers until now – the release to Microsoft Update (and a standalone installer for SP1 on the Microsoft website) means that SP1 is now generally available.

Sadly, I’ve been underwhelmed by the approach by certain ISVs (CheckPoint ZoneAlarm, to name one) to the provision of SP1-compliant products but in general SP1 is a major step forward which brings Windows Vista onto the same codebase as Windows Server 2008 as well as providing a number of incremental improvements. Paul Thurrott has a Windows Vista SP1 FAQ on his SuperSite for Windows.