Windows Vista Service Pack 1 – So What?

All Windows Vista Service Pack 1 details have been gaged under Microsoft's Windows Omerta. And the Redmond Company is only serving a few crumbs from the Vista SP1 feast, and just when it is good and ready. The Windows Automated Installation Kit Documentation is just such an example. Just to be clear, Microsoft has never officially denied that Windows Vista SP1 exists or that the service pack is in the works. But this is it.

Microsoft of course is trying to fight off the SP1 monster. It needs Windows Vista to sell now! It needs Vista to be a success, much more than Windows XP, twice more actually. It needs strong Windows Vista adoption from the get go because the mammoths that is Windows XP on the operating system market won't dislodge easily. Just looking at the statistics provides a clue for Microsoft's strategy with Vista. As of May 2007, there 4.31% of all the operating system users in the world are still running Windows 2000, 1.24% Windows 98 and there are even those that stuck with Windows 95 until now.

With Windows Vista out the door in January 2007 Microsoft has promised to deliver the next version in 2009. It could probably slip into 2012. But by then Windows Vista needs to do in two years what Windows XP did in five. Be deployed by over 80% of the market. Not an easy task when Windows XP won't budge.

By the way, Microsoft has intervened over the initial form of the Windows Automated Installation Kit Documentation. The original reference contained a rogue "Beta 3" term. Microsoft has clarified the fact that Beta 3 did not refer to Windows Vista SP1 or to the WAIK, but to Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn). But while Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 is available as a public download, Windows Vista SP1 is not? Is Microsoft cooking something?

Adoption drives adoption, in Microsoft's perspective. And the company is trying to build on Vista's momentum by muting all details about the future of the Windows platform. There are no details about Windows XP Service Pack 3, ostracized at the end of 2008, on the edge of cancellation. No word about Windows Vista Service Pack 1, no word about Windows Seven. You need to buy what Microsoft is serving you right now, and not concern yourself with the future. After all, SP1 will be just a standard release, right?

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