CrunchGear

If you’ve been putting off the upgrade to Vista in anticipation of SP1 coming out then you won’t have to wait much longer. Beta 1 of Vista SP1 is said to be coming some time during the week of July 16. If all this is true then we can expect the final version of SP1 to be released in November, which puts it in line with the RTM of Windows Server 2008, if you’re feeling lucky.

But don’t expect SP1 to add any new features, rather, expect it to fix or attempt to fix all the problems that Vista users have been experiencing since launch. Here’s a list of possible fixes you can expect to see:

* Performance tweaks lessening the amount of time it takes to copy files and shut down Vista machines (Yeah, I know Microsoft said Viista shutdown speed wasn’t an issue. Guess users weren’t so crazy, after all.)
* Improved transfer performance and decreased CPU utilization via support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA)
* Support for ExFat, the Windows file format for flash memory storage and other consumer devices
* Improvements to BitLocker Drive Encryption to allow not just encryption of the whole Vista volume, but also locally created data volumes
* The ability to boot Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on an x64 machine
* Improved success rate for firewalled MeetingSpace and Remote Assistance connections

Vista SP1 beta 1 to launch in mid-July [ZD Net]