Good news for everyone bemoaning the sorry state of things that is Windows Vista: Service Pack 1 is on the fast track. The first beta will reportedly be ready in a matter of days, reports say, specifically the week of July 16. Microsoft had previously said not to expect an SP1 beta until 2008 (and in fact it won't confirm the early SP1 beta release at all).

The news represents an almost mind-boggling rush to market of Vista's first service pack, the first collection of fixes for an operating system that has been nearly universally panned by users and critics alike. Previously I reported on a collection of patches, put together by a private enthusiast site, that represents 100 patches that may comprise SP1. They can still be downloaded from vistasp1.net and are worth perusing.

So the good news is that fixes are on the way. According to Mary Jo Foley, the primary thrust is repairing some of Vista's most notorious problems: Speeding up file copy times and shutdown operations, improving encryption, and other under-the-hood upgrades that, theoretically, should make Vista work better. Don't expect many brand new features, like the firewall rolled out with Windows XP Service Pack 2. Right now is fix time at Microsoft.

The bad news is that the rush to get this service pack out the door feels a little hasty. Microsoft isn't exactly known for producing clean code, and accelerating its service pack schedule by six months doesn't exactly instill confidence. Windows service packs have been known to break nearly as many features as they fix, so I'd approach Vista SP1 beta 1 as I would any Windows service pack: With extreme caution.

Of course, I'll install it as soon as it's available (I martyr my equipment for you readers) and report back on whether it's a success.

And Microsoft, please, for the love of God, fix Vista's totally broken networking. I beg you.

LINK: Vista SP1 beta 1 to launch in mid-July