Microsoft Announces Windows 7 SP1

Microsoft today announced service packs for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but declined to set a release date or a schedule for getting a beta in users' hands.

By Gregg Keizer
Thu, March 18, 2010

Computerworld — Microsoft (MSFT) today announced service packs for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but declined to set a release date or a schedule for getting a beta in users' hands.

[ For complete coverage on Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system -- including hands-on reviews, video tutorials and advice on enterprise rollouts-- see CIO.com's Windows 7 Bible. ]

According to a company spokesman, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will primarily contain "minor updates," including patches and hotfixes that will have been delivered earlier via the Windows Update service, rather than new features. One of the latter: an updated Remote Desktop client designed to work with RemoteFX, the new remote-access platform set to debut in SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2.

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Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be upgraded to SP1, Microsoft said, presumably at the same time as Windows 7 since the two operating systems share a single code base. Besides RmoteFX -- which Microsoft explained yesterday in an entry on the Windows virtualization team's blog -- Server 2008 R2 will also include a feature dubbed "Dynamic Memory," which lets IT staff adjust guest virtual machines' memory on the fly.

Microsoft did not spell out a timetable for the service packs, saying only that it would provide more information as release milestones approach.

Two weeks ago, a Web site that has regularly predicted release dates for Windows and its service packs said that Microsoft had dumped plans for a 22-month development cycle for Windows 7 SP1, and instead might deliver the upgrade in the fourth quarter of this year. At the time, Microsoft declined to talk about Windows 7 SP1, with a spokeswoman saying, "We do not comment on rumors or speculation."

If Windows 7 SP1 follows the pace set three years ago by Vista SP1, the fourth quarter is a good bet.

After much hemming and hawing, Microsoft admitted it would create SP1 for the then-new Vista in late July 2007, announced a schedule in August, seeded an invite-only group of testers with an early build in September, posted a release candidate for public download in December 2007 and formally launched SP1 in mid-March 2008. From start to finish, the Vista SP1 process lasted just over eight months.

That same timeline for Windows 7 SP1 would put its release in late November 2010.

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Originally published on www.computerworld.com. Click here to read the original story.

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