Vista SP1 pops up on TechEd Australia’s website
(update 2) MS says no SP1 at TechEd

Update 2: Microsoft has confirmed this is a copy error and does not intend to show Vista SP1 at TechEd Australia this year.

Microsoft TechEdIt looks like Windows Vista’s first service pack is coming a lot sooner than expected. Mary Jo Foley’s reports that a Vista SP1 beta might be seeded to ‘elite’ testers and enthusiasts as early as this week and public release around November, or as vaguely described by Microsoft PR “sometime this year”. However, pundits down-under might even get their dirty “hands on” SP1 as early as August 8th at Microsoft Australia’s TechEd conference on the Gold Coast this year.

Microsoft TechEd Australia Windows Vista SP1

Whoever made this website, likely an outsourced company, is a pure genius for making the entire website load in a single page – making it impossible to link to any particular pages directly. I wonder why the rest of the internet haven’t adopted this groundbreaking method of website navigation. Having said that, you can find this particular page under the “Education” menu, “Hands-on Labs” submenu and second collapsible table “Windows Client”. Displayed in black and white is “Windows Vista SP1”

Microsoft TechEd Hands-on Labs“Hands-on Labs” is a Microsoft event specialty. Like the name suggests, it is an opportunity for anyone to get their hands-on the latest technologies at one of hundreds of virtualized computers with brick-thick tutorial handbooks and step-by-step scenarios to help learn and familiarize new products.

To see SP1 show up in these labs would be interesting because it suggests it will be available to play with, not just look at or read about. For that to happen, it should be ‘feature-complete’ – meaning no new features will be added (only fixes), documented, tested for basic reliability, and deployable via Windows Virtual Server.

This could be a copy mistake, but I fail to see how anyone could mistype “Windows Vista SP1” for anything else in that context. At the moment it looks like I’ll be attending so you can all guess where I’ll be rushing to first. And if I remember correctly, cameras are allowed in the labs. 😉

Update: Microsoft Australia cannot confirm or deny at this point whether SP1 will be making an appearance in the Hands-on Labs or TechEd. They will provide an update when possible.

Update 2: Microsoft AU: “We’ve double checked and, as you suspected, this is a copy error. There will be no Vista SP1 content at TechEd Australia this year. We’re in the process of updating the TechEd site to accurately reflect this.

The Windows team is working hard on the service pack, and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year, but there will be no content on Vista SP1 at Tech.Ed in Australia.”

29 insightful thoughts

  1. Well, sounds good. So will you be there for us to take some pictures of the new Media Center? 😉

  2. “Whoever made this website, likely an outsourced company, is a pure genius for making the entire website load in a single page”

    Unfortunately Long, this is the way the web is going… AJAX, Flash, Silverlight… None of them allow you to specifically link to whatever content just popped up unless it’s specifically coded to do so.

  3. @Marco: Since there’s no UI changes, I guess the best thing that could happen to me is performance-related bug fixes like the ReadyBoost bug.

  4. doh – i hoped to hear something really kickass from you 🙂
    is vista so well done that it bores me after half a year already? guess so..

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  6. Long, don’t you have IE7Pro? It a really nice extension for things like crash recovery, drag and drop tab openining, etc.

  7. “Whoever made this website, likely an outsourced company, is a pure genius for making the entire website load in a single page”

    Making a page un-linkable is a destrtuction for getting high ranks on google.
    Information on the web should be made to be accessible.
    Copyright laws exist anyway. The format of the site will not prevent people from stealing your content if they wish to.

    I find this layout extremly bad, non-user friendly, reminds me of frames 100 years ago!!

  8. ohh comon ms.. stop it! we all know that the SP1 will be out very soon in the next days:

    Hello WDK Beta Users-

    A new beta WDK build is now available for download on Connect. This WDK beta release to Connect coincides with the recent OS beta release for Vista SP1 Preview. Please take a few moments to install the new build and test as applicable for your needs. As always, please file bugs as quickly and detailed as possible.

    Thank you for your continued support!

    WDK Team

  9. It Still ‘could’ be a typo: “Vista RC1” (Release Candidate 1) but… why would you leave out the “RC2” version then aswell? 😉

  10. Hahaha they’re trying to cover something up
    The email (that BoInTheMix posted) has an update:

    “Apologies All, We made a typo in the last notification that went that referenced the wrong OS. We didn’t mean to imply or cause any confusion on the availability of the Service Pack for Vista. The WDK build available now on connect is the latest for Windows Server 2008.”

  11. Unless you are invited into the BT Vista Sp1 , you can only get it by making a death threat to a fellow BT, bribing him, or waiting it to be leaked 🙂

  12. Vista is certainly not winning popularity contests but the service pack 1 or a new kernel is crucial is Vista is going to gain widespread acceptance. Regardless, we will have to accept Vista will be the de facto operating system as Windows withdraws support for XP next year

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