Next week’s Professional Developer’s Conference should see lots of news from Microsoft around Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft’s cloud computing strategy but those who are looking for something that should be hear a a little sooner, the Windows Vista team’s announcement that a beta of service pack 2 is just around the corner will probabably be of interest.

As seems to be the norm these days, the service pack will include new functionality (including Windows Search 4.0, native Blu-Ray support and updated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity options) but, even though some of these features are client-focused, it intended that a single service pack will apply to both client and server versions of Windows (quite how that works, only time will tell – the Windows Server team is focusing on including the RTM version of Hyper-V and power improvements in SP2 – perhaps it will be a single service pack, but two different versions?).

No news yet as to an intended release date for the final service pack – Microsoft’s Mike Nash wrote:

“The final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality. So we’ll track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for the release.”

Windows Vista SP2 beta will be available to a limited group of testers from 29 October.