14 DAY TRIAL // The first beta version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is approximately four months away. Microsoft offered official confirmation that Vista SP1 Beta will be delivered prior to November 12, 2007. Initially, without any word from Microsoft, speculations related to the launch date of the first service pack for Windows Vista pointed to the end of this year. The Redmond company then confirmed that the service pack will enter its first testing milestone in late 2007, only to later come up with the November 12 date. In this context, Windows Vista SP1 could be launched into beta in November, a month which bears a consistent amount of significance to the operating system. On November 8, 2006, Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing.
Microsoft disclosed the fact that it will make available Windows Vista SP1 by November 12, as a result of a complaint filed by Google impacting the operating system's default desktop search mechanism. For Google, Microsoft's claims that Vista SP1 beta will be offered by the end of 2007 were not sufficient. The Mountain View search giant debuted an initiative designed to extend the consent decree signed by U.S. federal and state antitrust regulators and Microsoft in a monopoly lawsuit from 2002 and the court's supervision of the Redmond Company's business practices, and inherently Vista SP1. The extension would be valid beyond November 12, a date synonymous with the expiration of the oversight. Microsoft responded with a memorandum apposing Google's intervention, and promising that Vista SP1 Beta will precede November 12.
"The Plaintiffs and Microsoft filed a routine Joint Status Report that explains the framework for the agreement that the parties reached amicably to address certain changes that Microsoft will make to the desktop search feature in Windows. Consistent with the spirit of cooperation among the parties thus far, Microsoft and the Plaintiffs will be working together over the upcoming months to oversee the implementation of the agreed-upon changes. Further, Microsoft will release a beta of Service Pack 1 prior to the expiration of the Middleware-related provisions of the Final Judgments," Microsoft revealed.