Windows Vista SP2 beta released!

[---MAD---]

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 has been released to the public in form of a beta. Whilst I haven't personally upgraded to SP2 yet (still on SP1), SP1 betas were stable and I haven't heard anything negative regarding SP2 beta's stability.

Hardware ecosystem support and enhancements

• Adds support for the 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) from VIA Technologies, which adds the ID and vendor strings for the new VIA 64-bit CPU.
• Integrates the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1. Bluetooth v2.1 is the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration.
• Improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode.
• Adds new capabilities to Direct X Graphic display reliability. The graphics experience has been greatly improved for users, such as gamers, running applications that require a lot of graphics processing.
• Includes updates to the RSS feeds sidebar with improved performance and responsiveness.
• Improves audio and video performance for streaming high definition content.
• Includes ability to record data to Blu-Ray media.

Operating system experience updates

• Windows Search 4.0 builds on Microsoft’s search technology with improved indexing and search relevance. It also helps find and preview documents, e-mail messages, music files, photos, and other items on the computer. The search engine in Windows Search 4.0 is a Microsoft Windows® service that is also used by programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 and Microsoft Office OneNote® 2007.
• Improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in Content protection for TV.

Enterprise improvements

• Provides the Hyper-V virtualization environment as a fully integrated feature of Windows Server 2008, including one free daughter OS with Windows Server 2008 Standard, four free licenses with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and an unlimited number of free licenses with Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.
• Provides an improved power management policy that is up to 10% more efficient than the original in some configurations (both on the server and the desktop), and includes the ability to manage these settings via Group Policy.
• Improves backwards compatibility for Terminal server license keys. Windows Server 2008 changed the licensing key from 512 bytes to 2,048 bytes which caused clients using older Terminal versions to fail. SP2 allows legacy license keys on Citrix applications to work with Windows Server 2008 Terminal server.

Setup and deployment improvements
The SP2 standalone installer:

• Provides a single installer for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
• Includes the ability to detect an incompatible driver and block service pack installation or warn users of any potential loss of functionality.
• Provides better error handling and descriptive error messages where possible.
• Improves manageability through logging in the system event log.
• Provides a secure install experience.
• Includes the ability to service the installer post release.

SP2 also includes a Service Pack Clean-up tool (Compcln.exe) which helps restore the hard disk space by permanently deleting the previous versions of the files (RTM and SP1) that are being serviced by SP2. The Pack Clean up tool can also be run offline while creating slipstream images to reduce the size of the image.

Download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

Enjoy!

[Flisker]

I'd rather wait for it to hit Stable (public) release

[---MAD---]

I'd rather wait for it to hit Stable (public) release

Yeah fair enough. Only if you know what your doing should you install beta software .

[Flisker]

Yea, I'd rather have a bug free SP than a buggy one which is on BETA

[Jordulti]

I'm going to wait until they release it fully. Because knowing me, As soon as Windows 7 Comes out commericially I am buying it.