Vista SP1 RTM starts today, downloadable mid-March

Okay, over on the Microsoft Vista Blog they’ve announced that Vista with Service Pack 1 is now in the release-to-manufacturing stage, so in the not-too-distant future we’ll see new computers coming out with Vista SP1 preloaded. Wonderful.

So what about the rest of us? We’ll get ours in the middle of March.

According to Microsoft’s Mike Nash,

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.

So there you have it. Not too much longer now.

Announcing the RTM of Windows Vista SP1 [Windows Vista Team Blog]