Vista SP1 To Arrive in 2009?

Now I don't know what to believe. At all. Only two weeks ago it was reported a Service Pack 1 beta would come out in days. Then that was retracted and a "later this year" announcement was floated for the Service Pack. Now, the latest rumor says that Vista's Service Pack 1 won't come out until 2009 at the earliest. I can't imagine this is true, but considering the massive crush of misinformation coming out of Microsoft these days, it's about as reliable as anything else I'm hearing. Take the news as wholly unsubstantiated, of course.

With Microsoft rumored to be eying 2010 for its next OS release, a 2009 Service Pack release seems like the dumbest thing imaginable that Microsoft could do. Even if it was just a minimal Service Pack designed to fix some basic problems with Vista and pay lip service to the idea of giving Windows users a little more confidence in the troubled OS, releasing a 2007 Service Pack is a good business idea. We aren't asking for much, really. Tweak the performance issues. Fix networking and file copies. Throttle down power usage. That sort of stuff.

Meanwhile, scorn is coming at Microsoft from all directions, the most recent from Acer president Gianfranco Lanci. (Globally, Acer is the fourth largest manufacturer of computers.) In his complaint, Lanci points to Vista's stability problems and slow performance, plus the application problems many users are experiencing with the new OS, as many older apps still won't run on Vista. According to Lanci, Vista has not led to any substantial increase in PC sales for his company, a stark contrast to older versions of Windows.

Other vendors have been less vocal about their frustration with Vista. Dell, for example, is offering both Linux and Windows XP on select computers. Other vendors continue to provide an XP option as well.

Want XP to continue as an option beyond its January 2008 termination date? It's not too late to let your voice be heard.