Microsoft is in full throttle with the evolution of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Having released the first wave of pre-beta builds to a select pool of testers in mid July, the Redmond company is hard at work on the development of the operating system's first refresh. A clear indication of this is the fact that a new build of Windows Vista SP1 has shipped to testers. Microsoft however is still mute on the subject and under Sinofsky's Windows Omerta, codename Translucency. At this point in time the Redmond company failed to officially confirm the new release of Vista SP1. Still, it seems that the fresh stage of the service pack is still in pre-beta phase, and the company delivered no indication pointing to when it plans to move Vista SP1 into beta.

The latest Vista SP1 beta release is build 6.0.6001.16633 (longhorn.070803-1655), according to Mary Jo Foley. Outside of the build number there is actually very scarce information available about this release. Undoubtedly, as the fresh Vista SP1 version will be dropped in the laps of more and more users additional details will leak. The previous release of the service pack made it clear that leaks are inherent, as Windows Omerta is not in effect outside of Redmond. One aspect seems to be clear though, the new pre-beta build of Vista SP1 is a standalone .EXE installer.

With the initial versions of SP1 released to testers Microsoft choose to deliver an ISO containing the entire operating system, with the service pack installed on top. The full build tag of the first Vista SP1 was 6001.16549.070628-1825. Microsoft had to face not only a feast of information about the 6001.16549 after the July availability but also leaks of the actual pre-beta version of the service pack to torrent trackers. The Company failed to react in any manner to the fact that Vista SP1 6001.16549 was offered for download via peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The only difference is that with the new release, Microsoft scrapped the 3+ GB ISO file in favor of an executable file with the Vista SP1.