Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008

The 14th, Microsoft made Vista Service Pack 1 available for both MSDN and Technet subscribers. It is also available for Volume License customers via the MVLS site. General availability is still scheduled for mid-March, then via individual download or via Windows Update.

I downloaded and installed on my home computer running Vista Ultimate x64. The installation was very smooth and I've had no problems with it at all. I haven't really dug in deep yet and looked at the improvements that Service Pack 1 promises yet, but at least the installation was without any problems at all. Network copying seems to be much quicker now, but I don't have any real benchmarks to base that on.


More interestingly though, I just noticed that Windows Server 2008 was available to me from MVLS. It might be available on MSDN and TechNet as well for all I know, but I haven't checked.

I plan on running Server 2008 as my Laptop OS, as Vista didn't perform all that well on it. Server 2008 and Vista both share the same kernel, and were basically developed as one branch in house at Microsoft until Vista went RTM.

One small fun fact is that the release version of Server 2008 includes Service Pack 1, so the "I'll wait until the first Service Pack is released before I install it" argument is moot. I don't think Microsoft has done anything like that, since perhaps the Exchange 4 release which, if memory servers right, had a fixup package installed in the final release version. I'm not 100% certain that this was the case though, but something along those lines came to mind when writing this.

Update: Iain McDonald explains why the release version of 2008 has Service Pack 1 included on his MSDN blog post Windows Server 2008 is called SP1. Adventures in doing things right?

The download is under way right now, and will most likely reinstall the laptop some time tonight or tomorrow, depending on when the 2.5GB download is finished.

I'll be back with a more comprehensive post regarding using Server 2008 as a laptop OS after I've been running it for a while.

Posted by Christian Mohn aka h0bbel