Microsoft has finally managed to put its Windows Omerta codename Translucency aside and talk Windows Vista Service Pack 1. The Redmond company did even something better, it summarized the basic questions related to the first service pack for Windows Vista into a rudimentary FAQ designed to satisfy the need for fundamental answers involving SP1. You will be able to find some of the issues addressed by Microsoft at the bottom of this article, courtesy of Nick White, Microsoft Product Manager working on the Windows Vista launch team.

White revealed that Microsoft considered the end of August as the ripe moment to open up the official discussion related to the first refresh for Vista. The Redmond company is currently cooking the beta built for the Vista SP1, but the final release will take some time to bake. In mid July, Microsoft began shipping pre-beta versions of Vista SP1 to a select pool of testers. Still, the not-yet-beta builds of Vista SP1 were leaked on the fertile soil of peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Microsoft failed to contain the leaks, as well as to react to the pre-beta build becoming available worldwide.

White also continued in the now traditional Microsoft perspective to downplay the relevance of the service packs. The Redmond company regards the Windows Update infrastructure as a sufficient mature environment to carry alone the weight of evolving the operating system, making service pack obsolete. Still, Microsoft is not yet ready to renounce to the service pack practice and Vista, XP and Office 2007 all feature SPs in the making.

In this context White underscored the fact that Microsoft had made available for download since early August updates for the operating system that were actually delivering fragments of Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Updates. Below you will be able to find three questions and the adjacent answers, courtesy of Nick White.

What is SP1? What is it not? - In addition to updates we've previously released, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we've identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also makes additional improvements to the IT administration experience. We didn't design SP1 as a vehicle for releasing new features; however, some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1.

When can I get my hands on the Beta of SP1? - A Beta release of Windows Vista SP1 is slated for availability in the next few weeks. A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through its paces to help prepare for broader release. We made the choice to start with a very small group of testers because we think it's better for both our customers and for Microsoft to keep the beta program small at the start. A later pre-release of SP1 will be available to a larger group of testers via MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

And what about SP1 itself -- when will that be available? - We're targeting releasing SP1 to manufacturing in the first quarter of 2008, but as always, we're first and foremost focused on delivering a high-quality release, so we'll determine the exact release date of SP1 after we have reached that quality bar. (FYI, in case you didn't already know: the Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 engineering efforts are aligned, so the Server team also said that they are targeting the first quarter of 2008 for their release to manufacturing.)