Note: Yes we’ve been away - we’ve either been very (extremely) busy and/or been on holiday. Sorry about the gaps, but it’s hard juggling a full working life and maintaining this and every other bloody blog in the Universe.

OK so this week has seen the release to a small group of testers (including myself, HA!) of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 beta. It’s around 550MB in size and seems to be only available for the x86 processor (at the moment…). Indeed, the build string as pointed out on a number of websites is 6001.16549(longhorn_sp1beta1.070628-1825). There are two kinds of testers - random ones selected from the Windows Vista beta of which have filed an extraordinary amount of bugs during the beta, and a number of participants from the Visual Studio 2008 beta so that certain things can be tested, of which Vista SP1 being a prerequisite.

Also around the same time, Windows XP Service Pack 3 being around 330MB in size, of which we don’t have access to I’m saddened to say, fixes around 900 bugs and problems with the existing Service Pack 2. The build string is 5.1.2600.3180 (xpsp.070718-2058) - according to Bink, people seem to think that the timing of these two beta’s being released, is that the final versions of the products will be released simultaneously.

From working at Microsoft myself - I can tell you, this is unlikely, as target dates are very rarely met.

Some sources: Bink.nu

According to Microsoft, the Internet Explorer 8 Beta is set to begin when Vista SP1 ships later this year. There is no information on when the exact date would be. However, since mainstream support for XP doesn’t end until April 2009 Microsoft will support IE 8 to Windows XP users.

But in the same way that IE 7 was released, there will be 2 versions: one that is built on the security settings of Vista, and the other one on the settings of XP SP2 or SP3.  More info will be posted when available.

Source: Bink.nu

Source: Winsupersite

Q: Will Windows Vienna be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions like Vista?
A: No, Vienna will almost certainly ship only in 64-bit versions. This is in keeping with Microsoft’s x64 migration schedule.

How wrong. Sorry Paul but you’ve got this one mixed up once again, and what a surprise - we can hardly get anything accurate from this man. Microsoft has pledged in the past that they will provide 32-bit operating systems until 2012, of which then 64-bit takes precedence. VistaBase has an article somewhere but it doesn’t seem to be working so I’ll update this page later.