Although Microsoft's Windows Omerta has muted all details related to the first service pack for Windows Vista, the few disparate pieces of information that managed to get through are starting to fall together and paint a schematic picture of SP1. The most important detail made public is of course related to the availability date. Although Microsoft confirmed initially that the first beta for the operating system will drop by the end of 2007, the timetable was further narrowed down, courtesy of Google. Now it has been officially confirmed that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta 1 will be released by November 12, 2007.

The connection between Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, formerly code-named Longhorn, was never emphasized by Microsoft from the early stages of the service pack's development. But it is curious to speculate just how deep the relation between Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will be. Considering the build numbers, it seems that it will literally stretch down to the core of the first service pack for the client operating system and the server OS.

"This brings up one of the more common questions we get, which is why every build is numbered 6001 and how you can tell the builds apart. Well, the build numbers do change, but after Windows Vista released (build 6000 in the shared code tree we had between client and server), we incremented the major build number by 1 to differentiate it and then started incrementing the minor build number, so the June 2007 CTP ends up being build 6001.16606.070619.0730. This doesn't appear on the desktop, but you can always find it in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsNTCurrentVersion in the BuildLabEx value," revealed David Lowe, Senior Product Manager in the Windows Server Division.

Now, the first service pack for Windows, in a screenshot captured at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles reads "Windows Build 6001 Service Pack 1, v113." So both Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2003 feature the same incremental build number, pointing to a common core. In this context, could the RTM date for Windows Server 2008 also precede November 12?