Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 RTM

Both the Windows Server and Windows Vista teams released new builds today. The much-awaited Windows Server 2008, formerly known by the code-name Longhorn Server, was released to manufacturing today, as was the highly anticipated service pack 1 update to Windows Vista.

If you are running Windows Vista you can expect to possibly see the service pack sometime in March as is described here:

Here’s the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

• In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com.  Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1.  If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1.  Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
• In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically.  That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically.  As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1.  The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
• The remaining languages will RTM in April.

Windows Server 2008 I presume will be available from the various distribution channels on or after the 27th of February (official launch date). I can’t wait to try out the awesome new virtualization feature called Hyper-V.

Well done to the two teams at Microsoft for what I’m sure will be two awesome deliverables.

[tags]Longhorn Server,Windows Server 2008,Windows Vista[/tags]