In an unbelievable turn of events, Microsoft revealed that the first service pack for Windows Vista will take current users of its latest operating system all the way back to Windows XP. The report comes from BBSpot and it's without a doubt nothing more than a satirical piece. It is in no way the actual course of action that Microsoft will take with the development of Windows Vista SP1. Still, it does offer a rather interesting perspective over Microsoft's first refresh for Vista.

Reading between the lines of course, the fact of the matter is that indeed, end users seem to be unconvinced by Windows Vista. Windows XP, at the end of August, enjoyed a market share of no less than 80.48%, according to statistics provided by Market Share by Net Applications. Since January 2007, Windows Vista has increased its foothold on the operating system market to no less than 6.26%.

Microsoft confirmed that in the first six months of Vista availability it shipped into the channel no less than 60 million licenses to the platform. This figure is roughly equivalent to 6% of the operating system market. If Vista continues to grow at the current pace, by 2010, when its successor, Windows 7 (Seven) is scheduled to drop, the operating system will have barely dislodged Windows XP from the dominant position on the market. In this context, Microsoft will have to joggle XP and Vista, both at around 40% of the market, and Windows 7 (Seven) coming from behind.

At this point in time, the Redmond company plans to make Windows Vista SP1 available in the first quarter of 2008. Since the release of Vista SP1 is synchronized to a certain extent to that of Windows Server 2008, the service pack for the client platform is expected to drop sometime after February 20008. Microsoft is also cooking the third service pack for Windows XP, scheduled for the first half of the coming year. And as a matter of fact, end users have indicated greater interest in XP SP3 than in Vista SP1. Still the first refresh for Vista has the potential to convince users to upgrade from XP in a larger number, consequently accelerating adoption.