The baking time for the first public milestone of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is finished. Hot from the Redmond ovens, the Beta bits of Vista SP2 have hit the Microsoft Download Center and are available for download for all users. On December 2, 2008, Mike Nash, Microsoft corporate vice president, Windows Product Management, announced the Customer Preview Program for Windows Vista SP2, and indicated that the first wave of downloads was available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Now the CPP involving Vista SP2 Beta has been expanded to all interested users.

According to Microsoft, SP2 is nothing more than a standard service pack release for Windows Vista. It is certainly not of the magnitude of what SP2 was for Windows XP. However, Vista SP2 is indeed designed to extend the hardware support capabilities of the operating system, as well as boost security, performance and wireless functionality. In addition, Microsoft indicated that the service pack was designed to enhance Vista's administration and support infrastructure.

Users should bear in mid the fact that Vista SP2 Beta is a pre-release software delivered for evaluation purposes and not for deployment into production environments. “Installation of Service Pack 2 Beta will result in Microsoft collecting information about the installation process, even if the installation is not completed. We do not recommend installing this software on primary or mission-critical systems. We recommend that you have a backup of your data before you install any prerelease software,” Microsoft explained.

The Redmond giant emphasized the fact that Service Pack 2 Beta would only install on top of Windows Vista operating systems that already had SP1 deployed. Versions of SP2 have been made available for both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Vista SP1. “Please make sure that your system is running Service Pack 1 before you install Service Pack 2. Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta - Five Language Standalone version can be installed on systems with any of the following language versions: English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish,” Microsoft added.

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) is available for download here.