So by now most of you are waiting with baited breath for the Windows Vista SP1 release that was supposedly due out this week. Well, you can breathe now. Microsoft PR put out a notice on to the Windows Featured Communities forum today that, contrary to the rumors circulating around the 'net, Windows Vista SP1 will not be put into beta this week. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't count on it anytime in this month. But that's just me, and I've been wrong before.
So if the beta is released in the next couple months, and the service pack RTMs at the end of the year, how can the beta period be so short? Won't they need lots of feedback? Well, it's simple really... a decent part of the SP1 code will be the same code that's in Windows Server 2008, and that is being tested very heavily right now. In fact, if you download the June CTP of Windows Server 2008 and turn the Desktop Experience Pack on, you can basically enjoy much of what you'll see in Windows Vista SP1 at this very moment (save for the media experiences and such).
I'm not going to say anything more about it than this: you can say it was "delayed" or whatever if you want (and I'm sure the blogosphere will), but the thing about Microsoft's new tight-lipped policy is that you can't say something has been officially delayed if an official release date has not been announced. What was stated was an unconfirmed rumor, nothing more, nothing less. Which is why I haven't chimed in until now.
So I hate to disappoint, but you can stop hitting F5 on Connect every 5 seconds now. When something is officially announced, you'll see it here.