Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Released

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The much-delayed Windows Vista's first "service pack" is finally available for the public. Software giant, Microsoft on Tuesday announced the public availability of Vista SP1, an update to Windows Vista that the company claims addresses specific reliability and performance issues, supports new types of hardware, and adds support for several emerging standards.

"Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update," Microsoft Product Manager Nick White yesterday wrote on the company's Vista blog. "For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 -- you can now do so!"

Vista SP1 is Microsoft’s first major update for the latest operating system, Windows Vista, which is the highly touted operating system from Microsoft. Vista SP1 addresses specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues; supports new types of hardware; and adds support for emerging hardware and software standards.

Vista SP1 is currently wrapped up in five languages-English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese- and includes a wide range of updates to the original version of Vista, which debuted a year ago.

The update fixes several issues related to performance, reliability and compatibility. Versions in other languages are expected to be released by mid-April.

The service pack includes more than 300 fixes for various types of glitches, including a problem in which optical disks turn blank after being formatted with Vista's Live File System and a glitch that generates an error message when large files are copied from one Vista-based computer to another over a network.

In addition, it includes an update that is designed to improve Vista's speed when it's operating on a computer linked to a virtual private network.

Windows Vista SP1 is available to download manually through the Windows Update feature inside the operating system or by using the Microsoft Download Center site, at microsoft.com/downloads.

The Redmond, Washington- based software mammoth recommended Vista users acquire SP1 using Vista’s update feature, which reduces the download from 450MB to 65MB for Vista 32 bit, and from 745MB to 125MB for Vista 64 bit.