Vista Service Pack 1 Ready For Automatic Updates

Microsoft’s major update patch for Windows Vista is now ready for Automatic Updates.

The first service pack is now available for Windows Vista users through the most popular updates distribution channel, Automatic Updates. The service pack was already available until now but users had to manually download it from Microsoft’s Windows Update online service. However, in order to preserve the availability of its Automatic Update service, Microsoft will release SP1 in several phases, so not all users will receive the SP1 at the same time.

The new service pack is expected to motivate especially enterprise customers that are still using Windows XP to finally upgrade to Microsoft’s latest OS, as these customers usually wait for the first service pack to be released for an OS before upgrading their desktops to that OS. However, Vista’s SP1 comes just a little earlier than the release of Service Pack 3 for the older but still very popular Windows XP.

Ever since the release of Vista, Microsoft has been trying to convince its customers to upgrade to it, and forget about Windows XP which has been around for about 8 years. The company announced that it will stop general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminate retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista. However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs installing to subnotebooks or UMPCs either until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, code-named Windows 7 — whichever date comes later.