Microsoft has started pressing the acceleration pedal of the marketing of Windows Vista, now complete with Service Pack 1. At the debut of June, Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management, revealed that Vista SP1 was ready for wide business adoption, and the software giant even launched a Vista experience initiative built around the operating system plus its first service pack. Now, Microsoft is taking it one step further and is actually letting end users test drive Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 online.

"The Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 (SP1) test-drive allows you to try (or "test drive") this latest operating system from Microsoft without having to install it on your PC. By simply logging onto our test drive environment using your web browser, you will be able to experience Windows Vista first hand. You can explore the product on your own, or follow along with guided exercises and videos," reads the welcome message on the Vista Ultimate SP1 Test Drive website.

A project of Microsoft Virtual Labs, the Vista Ultimate SP1 test drive is designed to emphasize four pillars of the platform: security, usability, reliability and versatility. The Redmond company has essentially put at the disposal of users a copy of 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, running on an AMD Opteron processor with 2 GB of RAM. The test operating system is available online and can be accessed through the browser. There are no downloads or installation involved in test driving Vista Ultimate SP1.

But even though it's meant to give users just a taste of what Vista Ultimate SP1 is truly capable of, the online client made available by Microsoft comes with a plethora of components from antivirus, to Application Compatibility Toolkit, the Deployment Toolkit, the Office 2007 System, SQL Server 2005, and even Windows AIK.