You know that old saying with Windows: “wait for the first service pack”? Well, some might say that, in these days of continuous updates, it no longer applies (I would be one of those people).  Even so if you are one of those people who has been holding out for the release of the first service pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, it’s nearly here – and you’ve been waiting for a while now (in fact, it’s been so long I could have sworn it had already shipped!)…

Today, Microsoft will announce the release to manufacture (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack 1 (but general availability is not until 22 February 2011).  I’m told that OEMs and technology adoption program (TAP) partners will get the bits first – MSDN and TechNet subscribers will have to wait until closer to the general availability date. I’ve had no word on availability for volume license customers so I’d assume 22 February.

As I wrote back in March 2010, there is a single service pack for both client and server (just as with Vista and Server 2008); however the features that it unlocks are different for the two operating systems.  My next post goes into some of the technical details of the improvements that are made to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack 1.