Microsoft News Tracker

Just last week Microsoft’s Tony Chor was roundly chastised about the lack of information on Microsoft’s next Web browser in the comments to his rather self congratulatory posting on the IE Team Blog about the first anniversary of Internet Explorer 7.

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The Microsoft Vista Team blog has the news on the debut of  the release candidate of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1):

Today we’re making available the release candidate (RC) of Windows Vista SP1 via Microsoft Connect, and tomorrow subscribers to TechNet and MDSN will have access to those RC bits too.  In addition, the RC will be available to the public next week via Microsoft’s Download Center.
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If you’re not familiar with SP1, you can find more information in this whitepaper.  We built Windows Vista SP1 to address specific reliability and performance issues and also to support new types of hardware and several emerging standards.  Further, SP1 is designed to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage Windows Vista.  Of course, those of you familiar with SP1 already know that some of SP1’s improvements are already available via Windows Update.

Among other things in the document, “Microsoft has added 700,000 new device types since the initial Windows Vista release in November 2006. Including device drivers in the box and those available from Windows Update, by July 2007 Windows Vista supported nearly 2.2 million devices.” All to the good, but it’s cold comfort if the particular device you are counting on in XP isn’t one of them or the Vista driver is buggy. Still, this is is a step towards cleaning up Vista’s less than stellar reputation.